Iomega hdd quality

  • Thread starter Thread starter MikeM
  • Start date Start date
My experience with Iomega over many years was
they have very poor customer support. For example,
they never did post a paraport driver for their
external parallel port zip drive. If you called them,
they would BS you into trying another driver that
they knew would not work. If you called them on
that, then they would offer to sell you a cd with
the paraport driver on it. Another example. The
Iomega software scanned every single piece of
hardware on a PC, and with some hardware, a
scan would activate it and lock it up. Iomega
never upgraded that kind of hardware polling,
and Microsoft Tech Support even posted on
their site about the problems it was causing
in their Office programs. Remove it, and Office
would clean right up. Another example .. on
modern PCs, Iomega zip drives run at about
1/10th the speed they use to run under Win98.
Their file system is not compatible, and Iomega
has never updated that. Another example ...
I saw versions of their drivers that required you
to rename each zip disk, or if you changed
disks, the delayed write would write the FAT
of the first disk over the FAT of the 2nd disk,
and your 2nd disk files were gone. They never
fixed that. Another example ... Iomegas idea
of competing with 50 cent CDRs was to produce
and 800 meg zip disk for $15, and still run it as
a Win98 device. I know nothing about Iomega
hard drives, but I would not trust them to be
compatible with other drives, or with backup
software, or OS partitioning software.

johns
 
johns said:
My experience with Iomega over many years was
they have very poor customer support.
Click to expand...

It's been "excellent" for me, as these examples show:

1. I had an IOmega DHD080-U USB HD that didn't blow air out of the fan
grill, and one tech support said the fan was supposed to run only when
the drive got hot enough, another said that it was supposed to run all
the time. In reality this particular model didn't have a fan, only
internal and external fan grills.

2. This drive was recognized when plugged in but didn't show up in the
list of drives. I happened to mention that the IDE HD drive inside the
IOmega was a Western Digital WD-xxxxxx, and the tech support person
threatened to put me on a black list and said I had voided the warranty
by opening the enclosure to get that informaiton. I told him to run
the IOmega utility made for shutting down external drives for safe
removal. I asked him to read what it reported, and he gave me the same
WD model number. He then misdiagnosed my problem as being a bad drive
power supply and sent me another one. I ended up using that supply to
replace a dangerous-looking internal one in a Neo drive enclosure. And
I did later open up the IOmega enclosure so I could drill a bunch of
holes in it to improve its cooling (external drive was $30, data is
much more valuable).
 
MikeM said:
Are iomega hdds any good?
Click to expand...

My only experience is with an older model DHD080-U bought in early
2005. It ran hot because the enclosure was small, not very
ventilated, and lacked a fan. I've since drilled lots of holes in its
enclosures to improve the cooling.

If you buy an external HD or an enclosure, look for either a fan
(better cooling) or a big enclosure (better cooling) with lots of
venting (better cooling) and the ability for vertical mounting (better
cooling). Did I mention that you want good cooling? I wouldn't
accept a fanless drive or enclosure unless it could be mounted
vertically because that alone can provide significant cooling and even
helps internal HDs inside desktop machines (2-3C cooler body, 10-20C
cooler power chips). Watch out for small or loose drive stands for
vertical mounting because you don't want something that will let the
drive tip over or shake if the table is bumped. If necessary, make
your own stable stand out of something like wood.

It may be cheaper for you build your own external HD by buying an
internal IDE HD and an enclosure separately. Here's a very good thread
about enclosures:

www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?start=900&catid=28&threadid=496281

Be sure to get something that's UL approved (backwards "R" followed by
a "U", looks sort of like "9U"), especially if the enclosure has an
internal power supply because a LOT of those are obviously not UL
approved and even look kind of dangerous (shock, fire hazard). Bytecc
is one brand that is UL approved, made by Welland, while Neo is one
that is not. Almost all external powr supplies are UL approved, but in
any case always verify the approval number through the online
certification database at www.ul.com.

Be skeptical of any enclosure that's claimed to be cooled through
heatsinking because that may not work well, even if it consists of
thick aluminum pieces that screw to the sides of the HD (the only
places where effective heatsinks will work) and have gooey material to
improve conduction. And sometimes the heatsinking is only trivial, as
with my Buffalo USB HD, whose enclosure is made of a thin steel chassis
("Unique heatsink chassis keeps internal parts cool") having very
little contact area with the HD. Also steel conducts heat roughly 10x
worse than aluminum does.
 
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