Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive Review

Mixing a portable hard drive with a sleek design, Iomega has taken a stab at livening up the look of its 160GB portable hard drive by adding cherry-red coloring (also available in blue and silver) with silver accents. Though externally rugged, the Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive can protect your physical data, but it lacks the internal data protection road warrior execs need most.

The Iomega eGo's elegantly curved chassis and chrome end caps make it look more like a flask than a hard drive. Weighing less than half a pound, it can easily fit in one hand and won't weigh down your laptop bag or purse. The exterior is tough enough to withstand a 4.25-foot drop onto industrial carpet over concrete without a scratch. Iomega covers the drive with a one-year warranty.

Installation was easy; both our Windows XP machine and MacBook Pro immediately recognized the drive. Transferring a 2GB file full of music, video, and pictures to the device took 1 minute and 46 seconds--a rate of 19.3 MBps. That's a little better than Iomega's 14.6-MBps reported write speed. The reported read speed of 28 MBps held just about true; the drive took 87 seconds to read a 2GB file--23.5 MBps. When we ran an HD Tach test (software that tests read speeds), we got a read speed of 31.5 MBps.

We were disappointed not to find a bundled CD containing an electronic user's guide and EMC Retrospect Express backup software. Instead, there was a sheet of paper telling us to download the software from a Web site. After doing so, we were pleased that Retrospect could perform full or partial drive backups, make a duplicate image, and create a bootable recovery CD. Though we successfully set up scheduled backup of our data to our hard drive, the drive lacks encryption tools. There wasn't any included software for password-protecting our drive, either; this omission immediately takes eGo off the market for business users traveling with sensitive data.

The 160GB eGo Portable Hard Drive is fast, stylish, affordable, and perfect for students and artists who need extra storage or an easy backup solution. But if you're a road warrior executive, we'd recommend Buffalo's MiniStation 120GB or Maxtor's OneTouch III Mini Edition. Both cost about the same amount of money and offer more bundled software and encryption options.

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