Iomega REVs Up To 70 GB

[pschmid]

It\'s not a mainstream backup device, but it\'s popular among professionals. The REV is an attractive tape alternative, and Iomega has now doubled its per-disk capacity from 35 to 70 GB. Will the new version finally be able to replace traditional tape backup? We\'ve got the specs, a cost per GB comparison and alternative suggestions for archival aficionados.

 

[lschiedel]

I have used Iomega products at various times over my entire IT career, from the original 40 MB drives to the 1 GB versions.

The problem is that you accumulate these disks that a year later become USELESS! And many of the units had serious contamination problems (ie dust and smoke).

Every version is double the capacity of the previous, and many times are incompatible with the older drives.

Hard drive capacities have continued to increase at such a rate that the removable drives quickly become far too small to keep up.

How many of these cartridges would it take to back up a decent video or programming workstation with a 500GB hard drive?

Plus the price is now utterly ridiculous. $600 for the drive with one cartridge that stores a pitifull 70 GB?

Just buy an external 250 GB drive for about $100. If you need more, buy more than one. For the same price i could purchase 6 external drives (all of which i could attach at once!) for a total of 1.5 TB!!!

Or even better, buy an empty USB external drive case and buy a decent drive (maybe the exact same one as in your PC), then when your needs increase... buy another drive and replace the one in the USB case.
Then if you have an issue with your PC, you can replace the PC's hard drive, and reimage back from the external drive (or even just swap the drive from the external case! and then backup to another new drive).

In conclusion, as a serial VICTIM of IOMEGA's external cartridge drives for about 15 years at serveral jobs, I believe these are just about the worst waste of money in the PC hardware market.

 

[estuardo]

I have a question for you:

What happens if you drop an 3.5" or 2.5" HDD to the floor?

If you have a tape backup or a REV backup nothing will happen to the media if you drop it. If you really value your backups, no external HDD will compete with the reliability of the tape or REV media. The same can be said for CDs and DVDs if they get accidentally scratched.

You have to compare the REV solution with the product they intend to compete: The tape backup solutions. Tapes are more expensive and are slower and don't have random access. Tapes changes in capacity every once in a while and you are also left with a bunch of obsolete tape media. This new drive at least have backward compatibility with the 35GB media you may have.

HDDs are good backup options if you keep the drive at the same location as your computer; but for off site backups, I will always use a reliable tape or REV solution.

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