Iomega Desktop Hard Drive review

The brushed aluminium finish on Iomega's Desktop Hard Drive is certainly a striking one. But, while it exudes a feeling of solidity, this drive actually weighs in at a reasonably lightweight 1.26kg.

Its 34mm thickness beats the other fatties in the group too - making it much more portable than most - and you have the choice of lying it down on its little rubber feet or placing it in the plastic stand provided. It's a very flexible device.

Switch on the power using the button on the rear, and a blue light glows on the front to indicate hard disk activity. Next to that switch and the power input socket sit two FireWire400 ports and one 800, plus a more standard USB connector.

We'd advise you to go for the latter, despite FireWire's supposed speed advantage. With USB the Iomega performed in line with the other drives on test. The 100MB file collection was written to the drive in 7.6 seconds and read in 5.1 seconds. The 50MB file finished writing in 1.7 seconds and read from the drive in 1.5 seconds. All perfectly respectable results.

However, switching to FireWire saw performance dip dramatically - it took a shade under two minutes to complete the 200MB multiple file transfer. It's safe to say that you're better off sticking with this drive's USB connection.

Performance is not the main problem here, however, it's the high price. With a 500GB disk and a price of £77 (exc VAT), the Iomega Desktop Hard Drive is behind all but the Western Digital in terms of cost per gigabyte at 15.4p.

Unfortunately it doesn't have the eSATA port, warranty and gorgeous design of that rival, so falls short of a recommendation.

Author: Mike Jennings