Home > Consumer Reviews > Iomega Desktop Hard Drive 500 GB Hi-Speed USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - 33654

This product stayed in my home at all times. It was never dropped, mishandled, or abused in any way. It worked great for the less than 6 months that I had it, and decided to suddenly stop working one day when I was downloading a podcast. I got a replacement cord for it, which helped momentarily, but it is dead for good now. I was luckily able to save a lot of the data that was on it when I had it momentarily working again, but my iTunes library is no more. I'm looking at alternate methods to recover my MP3s because Iomega charges you for extraction, even under warranty, and they won't even tell you how much until you send it back in. If you have it extracted elsewhere, there goes your warranty.

They will give you online tech support if you're under warranty, but will charge you $20 by phone for each incident. The website is also very hard to navigate.

I was extremely satisfied until it crapped out for no apparent reason. Even with the warranty, I don't want another one. I'd rather just get my data and get a product that will work.

I mean, I'm not about to go extolling the incredible, powerful, sentimental value for an external hard drive. It works well, (as long as you put it in a USB 2.0 slot) is cheap, and, so far, very reliable. I'm using it mainly as a backup drive for my media files, though some older, lower-end games and aps can be run off of it...(nothing with DirectX 9.0 or higher) There's no firewire support, which generally restricts it to data backup. It's a little large, but it stays very cool, which helps alot in easing my fears of losing data (my other external drive doesn't have any cooling apparatus, and worries the heck out of me when it heats up).
Overall, I think it deserves a "4" for it's nice, simple functionality.
I mean, come on, a hard drive either works, or doesn't.

The iomega was a great piece when I first bought it. It ran smooth, took no time at all to reformat to my computer, and I backed up about 60 GB of music on it and over 40 GB of movies on it. Then, one day, it just wouldn't work. All that comes from it is a strange clicking sound, which I've researched, and basically means the hard drive tape needs to get replaced, making almost all of my material unrecoverable. Just great. The drive was never dropped or mishandled. It just stopped working after 2 months. What a waste of time for this company to create such a horrible product.

Great product. Very simple to use, just plug in (USB) to mount, then click and drag to transfer files. Videos and songs play as seamlessly as from your internal HD.

The only issue I've had so far is that when I restart my computer with the HD plugged in and turned on, the computer will not recognize it when it restarts. But there's a simple solution: just disconnect and reconnect the USB (or you can turn the HD off and then on again, but I think unplugging the USB causes less wear and tear). A littlle annoying but no big deal. Other than that, works as advertised.

With an established name like IOMEGA gets endorsed by a Company that sets high standards that APPLE does, you would expect IOMEGA to design a device that will protect your data, and be there in an event that files get damaged or lost. The drive lasted me about 5 months. I noticed a warning sign when my OS said it had to index the drive after it was working fine all those months. The following day, the drive would not mount. It would turn on and make a cracking popcorn noise but never show up on the desktop. This was my easy method of backup. Fortunately I have data stored on both external drives and DVD data disks, so no real loss of data occurred. However it is taking me days to get all of my data back onto my main hard drive to begin the Time Machine Process with a new drive from a well trusted company called Western Digital. I have never had a problem with Western Digital and have four of them on my computer now. This was my first, and LAST IOMEGA product.