Home > Consumer Reviews > Iomega 31475 4x4x6 External USB CDRW Drive

Iomega products aren't known for their reliability, so I was skeptical, but I decided to buy one because the price was right (and because it looks good). I happy to say that I haven't had any problems so far. I've burned a dozen CD-Rs in the past few weeks, both data and audio. What's more, it works perfectly with Mac OS X v10.1. I just plugged it in, put in a blank CD-R, and, to my amazement, it prepared the disc and was ready to burn! I didn't have to install any drivers or special software first. iTunes fully supports this drive, too, which makes burning audio CDs a breeze. Overall, my experience using this Iomega CD-RW drive with Mac OS X has been excellent.

There are 3 simple steps to "burning CD's".

[1] Buy the Iomega Zip650 USP Drive; [2] Install the Software; [3] Connect it to a USB port.

For me, that is all it took to start creating CD's for my RoadWarrior {IBM ThinkPad}. The Adaptec Software is easy to use. The Iomega Drive is accurate and easily portable.

Since I do a lot of my work "on the road", it makes it easy to transfer data back to my Desktop system when I return. I have found no problems with the different drives that I use; being able to read from or write to CD-RW media formatted on either machine. I can make extra copies and snail-mail them to collaborators without any problem of lost data, (for less than a BUCK including postage). If we are at the same conference, I can burn the data and hand it to them in less than 15 minutes (sometimes more than 300 HiRes Digital Photos and 20 MB of data from a single weekend conference).

The speed of "burning" is better on this portable drive than on my multiple media desktop drive. (DVD-ROM/CD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW internal IDE drive).

I still use a Iomega ZIP (100Mb) USB drive but am finding fewer times that I need it.

If you want to burn audio CD's and make data CD's but don't want to install an internal CD-RW drive, then you might want to check out this item. Extremely easy/fast to install via the USB port. Burns CD's easily, but it's not the fastest. Comes with lots of software--Music Match jukebox and Adaptec CD wizard/Direct CD and some blank CDR's and a Verbatim CD-RW. Installs itself as a new drive. (Mine is drive F). Caution--for data discs--don't use generic CD-RW's. They will not work. Use the Verbatim DataLifePlus 2x-4x Rewritables. The unit requires you to format the CD-RW disc before the first use (which is an annoyance) but after that, all you do is drag and drop from Windows Explorer like you would with a diskette. Very Fast. No problem with any brand of CD-R's for audio. I've used various ones and all burned fine.

Since the day I've bought this device I was not able to make a single CD. I've been in contact with Iomega technical support first via email (took weeks) and then on the phone (available weekdays only from 9 to 5!). I've received numerous (sometimes conflicting) advises from Iomega technical support personal. None of the solutions led to a satisfactory outcome. The device ruined dozens of blank CDs.
If you have a Toshiba laptop DO NOT buy this device. It took 6 months to find out that this device is not compatible with Toshiba laptops (the problem is the USB driver made by NEC used on some Toshiba computers).
However, Iomega CD-RWs work well with Mac computers.

I was freaked out when reading all these reviews - it seems that people either love a product or hate it. I bought this burner for use with my HP Pavillion PC, and I have had no problems whatsoever with it. It is really easy to set up, the software is easy to install and intuitive to use, and it is very quiet. It is not as fast as some burners out there, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to burn an 80 minute CD. However, unless you are burning CDs for commercial applications, I doubt you will miss the speed. There is built in CD and jewel-box label design software, but they seem to be extremely cheesy and I would recommend buying a real design program if you want to put together really nice labels...