Price : Too low to display
Includes: external power supply, 6 ft. Ethernet cable, Iomega Discovery Tool (PC/Mac), Iomega Automatic Backup PC (4 seat license), MusicMatch Jukebox (PC), Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition (PC). Iomega 250GB External Network Hard Drive - This external hard drive is designed to let you easily add additional hard drive space to all of your networked computers at once! Simply connect it to any available 10/100 Ethernet port on your network, and start taking advantage of high speed data transfer rates, and 250GB of extra storage space! 9ms Average Seek Time 7200 RPM
This review is from : Iomega 250GB External Network Hard Drive
First Impressions . I recently purchased this drive after picking it over the Buffalo LinkStation 250GB. There are a lot of opinions about the LinkStation on the Web, but not any about this drive. It could be because it is a new product? Anyway, alot of people complaned about the LinkStation failing due to firmware issues, so i deceided to give Iomega a shot, not without some hesitation. I owned a Zip "click of death" drive years ago and swore I would not buy another Iomega product, oh well.
Pros:
os: WXP Pro
1) easy to setup. The supplied software handles mapping the network drive.
2) Included backup software, works ok for small SOHO backups.
3) Low noise level (There is one concern please see the con section).
Con:
1) Lack of security settings for individual users access to folders. It seems that this drive is designed with the less technical user in mind. maybe Iomega can provided this capability via a firmware update.
2) Lack of USB 2.0 or Firewire port. This drive can only connect through Ethernet. No growth capabilities provided.
3) You can FTP to the drive except when I logged in as root my password was not accepted. I think I will investigate this further, it would be great if you could set up FTP access for different users. Again maybe a firmware update?
4) One rather disturbing thing. When I powered off and powered on with a short delay between operations a high pitch whine sound started to come from the drive. I powered off again and waited 20 minutes and powered it on again, this time the sounds from the drive were "normal". Its been on now for 24 hours+ with no abnormal noises. I contacted tech. support and they blamed this noise on a loose connection or "long" ethernet connection. Hmmm, I have it attached to a hub, with the cable that it came with, and did not touch the drive between powering off and on.
I can recomend this drive if the "strange' noise doesn't mean it is going to fail. I will post after 30 days to update. It is easy to setup and use. It should basically be considered by a home user or small business that doesn't need any special NAS needs.
First Impressions . I recently purchased this drive after picking it over the Buffalo LinkStation 250GB. There are a lot of opinions about the LinkStation on the Web, but not any about this drive. It could be because it is a new product? Anyway, alot of people complaned about the LinkStation failing due to firmware issues, so i deceided to give Iomega a shot, not without some hesitation. I owned a Zip "click of death" drive years ago and swore I would not buy another Iomega product, oh well.
Pros:
os: WXP Pro
1) easy to setup. The supplied software handles mapping the network drive.
2) Included backup software, works ok for small SOHO backups.
3) Low noise level (There is one concern please see the con section).
Con:
1) Lack of security settings for individual users access to folders. It seems that this drive is designed with the less technical user in mind. maybe Iomega can provided this capability via a firmware update.
2) Lack of USB 2.0 or Firewire port. This drive can only connect through Ethernet. No growth capabilities provided.
3) You can FTP to the drive except when I logged in as root my password was not accepted. I think I will investigate this further, it would be great if you could set up FTP access for different users. Again maybe a firmware update?
4) One rather disturbing thing. When I powered off and powered on with a short delay between operations a high pitch whine sound started to come from the drive. I powered off again and waited 20 minutes and powered it on again, this time the sounds from the drive were "normal". Its been on now for 24 hours+ with no abnormal noises. I contacted tech. support and they blamed this noise on a loose connection or "long" ethernet connection. Hmmm, I have it attached to a hub, with the cable that it came with, and did not touch the drive between powering off and on.
I can recomend this drive if the "strange' noise doesn't mean it is going to fail. I will post after 30 days to update. It is easy to setup and use. It should basically be considered by a home user or small business that doesn't need any special NAS needs.
Iomega 250GB External Network Hard Drive Reviews
Review update!!!!! . I have to post this under a different name. Amazon does not allow multiple reviews. anyway....
This drive performs great!!! the noise is not an issue, the speed is good, no crashes (its been on for over a month). In short this is a great drive for SOHO who doesn't want a lot of hassle with setting up and configuration. I would revise my original review to 4 1/2 stars.
Review update!!!!! . I have to post this under a different name. Amazon does not allow multiple reviews. anyway....
This drive performs great!!! the noise is not an issue, the speed is good, no crashes (its been on for over a month). In short this is a great drive for SOHO who doesn't want a lot of hassle with setting up and configuration. I would revise my original review to 4 1/2 stars.
Iomega 250GB External Network Hard Drive Opinions
a few installation 'hiccup' - updated . The disk powers up fine, and I plugged it to my linksys wireless router in no time..
However, the 'iomega discovery' software which is supposed to 'discover' the disk for the user could not find from my wireless laptop... This probably comes the Cisco security agent installed on my laptop by my company, as it reporting blocking some udp signal coming from the iomega discovery software.
I tried to connect physically my laptop to my router, but still coulnd't find the disk... I tried the alternate method proposed by the online help (look under 'my network places'), but this still didn't work..
Eventually, I looked into the DHCP table of my router, identified the 'new' IP adress of the disk, and was able to access it like this. The IP adress also allows to access a small web page with some configuration settings... I especially like the option allowing to power down the disk remotely. Would love to have an optin to power it up remotely ;-)
Streaming of mp2 and divx works fine between this disk and my wireless B laptop. This is perfect.
More documentation on the expected read/write speed, and on discovering the disk would be nice...
a few installation 'hiccup' - updated . The disk powers up fine, and I plugged it to my linksys wireless router in no time..
However, the 'iomega discovery' software which is supposed to 'discover' the disk for the user could not find from my wireless laptop... This probably comes the Cisco security agent installed on my laptop by my company, as it reporting blocking some udp signal coming from the iomega discovery software.
I tried to connect physically my laptop to my router, but still coulnd't find the disk... I tried the alternate method proposed by the online help (look under 'my network places'), but this still didn't work..
Eventually, I looked into the DHCP table of my router, identified the 'new' IP adress of the disk, and was able to access it like this. The IP adress also allows to access a small web page with some configuration settings... I especially like the option allowing to power down the disk remotely. Would love to have an optin to power it up remotely ;-)
Streaming of mp2 and divx works fine between this disk and my wireless B laptop. This is perfect.
More documentation on the expected read/write speed, and on discovering the disk would be nice...
pretty nice for home computing . Installation and configuration are very easy. It has native support for Windows and Linux, very rare in similar products of the price range. The 'foldershare' server is one of the most worthy feature. Do NOT update your firmware, because then you will lose it due to contract reasons. MS bought the company supplies foldershare service. I think the service will stay, and I am willing to pay if they start charging.
The fan is loud (the only thing from 5 stars). Definitely not something you want to be in the same room when you work. For me it's okay since it stays with the router, etc. in another room. I bought one at $120 last week and the second at $70 this week (on sale), all from CompUSA.
Edit on 7/17/2006: 1) The fan is really loud, you just can't underestimate how loud it is; 2) unstable, unreliable, and inconsistent connection. When two of my PCs accessing one file the same time, both lost connection. This is the worst among three network storage I personally use at home. The best is the NetDisk (not as many features, but stable, reliable and consistent).
If I could lower the stars to 1, I would have.
The fan is loud (the only thing from 5 stars). Definitely not something you want to be in the same room when you work. For me it's okay since it stays with the router, etc. in another room. I bought one at $120 last week and the second at $70 this week (on sale), all from CompUSA.
Edit on 7/17/2006: 1) The fan is really loud, you just can't underestimate how loud it is; 2) unstable, unreliable, and inconsistent connection. When two of my PCs accessing one file the same time, both lost connection. This is the worst among three network storage I personally use at home. The best is the NetDisk (not as many features, but stable, reliable and consistent).
If I could lower the stars to 1, I would have.
Easy setup . This was easy to install... was up and running in a matter of minutes.
It seemed noisy at first, but nothing unusual... just another hard drive running.
I relocated it to under my desk and the noise is not a problem.
I haven't tried the Iomega file sharing or backup software which is included.
I'm using it only for storing music and accessing it with Squeezebox2 on my wireless network.
It works great.
It seemed noisy at first, but nothing unusual... just another hard drive running.
I relocated it to under my desk and the noise is not a problem.
I haven't tried the Iomega file sharing or backup software which is included.
I'm using it only for storing music and accessing it with Squeezebox2 on my wireless network.
It works great.
Cons Review
I returned this hard drive.... . I returned this hard drive because it has a substantional hum. It also has a very bright blue light on it that illuminated my whole office. If you have a combined office/bedroom, this is not the hard drive for you. And, I found the write speed to be slow. I got a NetDisk by SmartDisk instead. This hard drive makes absolutely no sound and has no bright lights. And I was able to back up my entire hard drive in just a few hours.
High noise level and slow writes . I bought this drive today from Fry's for around $250 + tax. I had a 60GB portable iomega drive that I have been happy with and kind of was the reason I decided to buy this one.
After a few hours now I am pretty sure that I will return it tomorrow. The drive is very slow when writing. I never had a network drive before but I know the speed just doesn't make sense for a backup device. The other thing is the noise level. I don't know how companies get away with not putting the noise level on the box. I wish this was mandatory. Also the size of cache buffer is no where to be found.
Installing the drive was very easy and I didn't even installed the software that came with it.
After a few hours now I am pretty sure that I will return it tomorrow. The drive is very slow when writing. I never had a network drive before but I know the speed just doesn't make sense for a backup device. The other thing is the noise level. I don't know how companies get away with not putting the noise level on the box. I wish this was mandatory. Also the size of cache buffer is no where to be found.
Installing the drive was very easy and I didn't even installed the software that came with it.
Do not buy this item . I backed up all my data, verified it was there, shut down everything correctly and then moved from a laptop (XP v/2) to a new computer (XP also). All of my data is now being read as RAW and unaccessible (computer asks if I want to format hard drive). IOMEGA is no help at all. Do not buy this product. I would hesitate buying any IOMEGA product.
Not ready for production . It's October 2006. I just purchased the 250GB Storcenter External Hard Drive with built in uPnP media server, FTP server, etc. I bought it because I wanted a backup for my PC and a media server all in one device. I've tried and tried to get this thing to work for 4 weeks, even getting in touch with Iomega tech support twice, and the bottom line is: I'M SELLING IT AND AM GOING TO TRY THE D-LINK DNS-323 INSTEAD! I have the latest firmware installed on the Storcenter. For reference, I have this hard drive hooked up via ethernet cable to my SBC DSL modem/router with built-in 802.11g wireless, to which my PC is also connected. Two rooms away in my living room, I have a SMC 802.11g wireless music player which works fine with either Windows Media Connect (now built into Windows Media Player version 11) or MusicMatch software running on my PC. I was using this device to (attempt to) play the music stored on the StorCenter drive.
The Iomega 250G Storcenter has the following problems:
1. You cannot use it as a media server and a mapped network hard drive at the same time (at least for more than a couple minutes). Having the media server active kicks the hard drive off the network. Disabling the media server corrects this problem. So, in essence, you have to log in and change the drive's settings depending on whether you want to listen to music in the living room or if you want to copy/paste files to the hard drive.
2. As a corollary to item 1, you cannot use the Iomega 1 step-backup software if the drive's media server is active. Your backup will not complete, because the media server will soon kick the drive off the network.
3. The media server settings in the Storcenter drive give you the option to limit its search for media files to one folder on the drive. This doesn't work if the directory structure is too long. The CGI script will bomb. This is unfortunate, because all I did was use the Iomega 1-step backup to back up the "my documents" folder. But as you know in Windows XP, "My Documents" is not directly under the C: drive. So by the time you nagivate to backups/my first backup/documents and settings/my username/my documents/my music, the Storcenter's browser-based control panel can't handle it. It should be noted that the CGI script DOES NOT bomb because the filename is too long for Windows. If the filename were too longer for windows, then the file couldn't have been copied to its location. Think about it.
4. I tried letting the storcenter index all media on the drive, and then I tried limiting it to the My Music folder (which I moved closer to the drive root - see item 3 above), and neither one ended up working well with my SMC wireless media player. Though the media player was reading data from the Storcenter (I received a menu for the Storcenter drive with menu items of 'Music', 'Pictures', 'Videos', 'File Structure' etc. Turns out I could navigate to and then play a PORTION of the audio files by using the 'File Structure' menu option, which just lets you navigate the directory structure to the files you want. But selecting 'Music' just caused my SMC media player to display its 'I'm working' icon for 5 seconds, then revert back to the same menu screen. It would never take me into the next menu under 'Music' except occasionally (like when I told the Storcenter to rebuild its media server index, and it was busy re-indexing but hadn't got very far). Under the 'Music' menu item there was 'All Music', 'Genres', 'Authors', etc. But 99% of the time, I was dead in the water. But after the Storcenter had reindexed the entire contents of the My Music folder residing on it, then I could no longer go past the 'Music' menu item. My guess is that some of my files (an eclectic mix of .wma's and .mp3's, many of which are my ripped CD collection, and many of which are my own audio recordings as a songwriter) posed a situation that the Iomega Storcenter just can't handle. Too bad, because Windows Media Connect (Windows Media Player 11) can handle these files. And so can MusicMatch software.
So, bottom line is that I'm selling this bad boy (I'm using bad in its literal sense, not in the postmodern sense where 'bad' means 'good'), and buying the D-Link DNS-323 to see if it's any better. Sure it's more expensive, but at least I'll get RAID backup and a gigabit ethernet port. Not to mention a media server that works.
The Iomega 250G Storcenter has the following problems:
1. You cannot use it as a media server and a mapped network hard drive at the same time (at least for more than a couple minutes). Having the media server active kicks the hard drive off the network. Disabling the media server corrects this problem. So, in essence, you have to log in and change the drive's settings depending on whether you want to listen to music in the living room or if you want to copy/paste files to the hard drive.
2. As a corollary to item 1, you cannot use the Iomega 1 step-backup software if the drive's media server is active. Your backup will not complete, because the media server will soon kick the drive off the network.
3. The media server settings in the Storcenter drive give you the option to limit its search for media files to one folder on the drive. This doesn't work if the directory structure is too long. The CGI script will bomb. This is unfortunate, because all I did was use the Iomega 1-step backup to back up the "my documents" folder. But as you know in Windows XP, "My Documents" is not directly under the C: drive. So by the time you nagivate to backups/my first backup/documents and settings/my username/my documents/my music, the Storcenter's browser-based control panel can't handle it. It should be noted that the CGI script DOES NOT bomb because the filename is too long for Windows. If the filename were too longer for windows, then the file couldn't have been copied to its location. Think about it.
4. I tried letting the storcenter index all media on the drive, and then I tried limiting it to the My Music folder (which I moved closer to the drive root - see item 3 above), and neither one ended up working well with my SMC wireless media player. Though the media player was reading data from the Storcenter (I received a menu for the Storcenter drive with menu items of 'Music', 'Pictures', 'Videos', 'File Structure' etc. Turns out I could navigate to and then play a PORTION of the audio files by using the 'File Structure' menu option, which just lets you navigate the directory structure to the files you want. But selecting 'Music' just caused my SMC media player to display its 'I'm working' icon for 5 seconds, then revert back to the same menu screen. It would never take me into the next menu under 'Music' except occasionally (like when I told the Storcenter to rebuild its media server index, and it was busy re-indexing but hadn't got very far). Under the 'Music' menu item there was 'All Music', 'Genres', 'Authors', etc. But 99% of the time, I was dead in the water. But after the Storcenter had reindexed the entire contents of the My Music folder residing on it, then I could no longer go past the 'Music' menu item. My guess is that some of my files (an eclectic mix of .wma's and .mp3's, many of which are my ripped CD collection, and many of which are my own audio recordings as a songwriter) posed a situation that the Iomega Storcenter just can't handle. Too bad, because Windows Media Connect (Windows Media Player 11) can handle these files. And so can MusicMatch software.
So, bottom line is that I'm selling this bad boy (I'm using bad in its literal sense, not in the postmodern sense where 'bad' means 'good'), and buying the D-Link DNS-323 to see if it's any better. Sure it's more expensive, but at least I'll get RAID backup and a gigabit ethernet port. Not to mention a media server that works.
Only good for backup not recovery . This is an OK hard drive for your everyday file storage, but don't rely on it for any type of disaster recovery or serious back-up. The setup was very easy and both of my computers quickly found the drive. I did a full system backup on one of the computers (took over 3 1/2 hours) so it is slow. Unfortunately I had a disk failure on that machine and tried to recover. I found out that the "recovery software" is a Linux program which has very few device drivers. It did not recognize my Compaq Tablet mouse or keyboard. Then I tried it on my Toshiba Tecra M3 laptop. It did not recognize the ethernet card in the Toshiba, so a recovery would have been impossible on that machine as well. I can't believe that a company would sell a device advertised for "perfect backups" and not have decent software to accomplish the recovery. I guess they just advertise that it does great back-ups and don't worry about the eventual recovery. I can not recommend.
Feature Iomega 250GB External Network Hard Drive
- 250 GB Network Hard Drive
- Plug and Share Capability
- Interface: Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX
- Versatile
- Touch-free backup and configuration
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Product Details
EAN : 0742709330889UPC : 742709330889
MPN : 33088
Brand : Iomega
Weight : 4 pounds
Height : 5 inches
Length : 11 inches
Width : 10 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
Hardware Platform : PC
Manufacturer : Iomega
Model : 33088
Publisher : Iomega
SKU : DH33088
Studio : Iomega
Where To Buy
You can buy Iomega 250GB External Network Hard Drive on Amazon . Click here to Read More
