Iomega's REV Marks Leap Forward For External Drives

The REV In Detail

Iomega's essential goal was to combine the advantages of a hard disk with those of a tape solution. So it is not surprising that the REV is equally fast in terms of access and offers high data transfer rates without being strikingly different in terms of price. A nice feature, parenthetically: REV is absolutely bootable.

The drive is the size of a 3.5" hard drive and weighs approximately the same (around 400 g). An eject button is still located on the front side, next to the opening where you insert the disk. On the back side are the USB interfaces as well as the sockets for the power supply. Unfortunately, you can't power the USB variant through the USB cable; you have to use the drive's power supply. According to Iomega, however, the FireWire version will be retrofitted with this functionality so as to satisfy users with a high need for mobility as well.

The unusual feature about the REV is, on the one hand, its enclosure: An intelligent closing mechanism ensures a clean operating environment for the most part. On the other hand, every disk has its own spindle motor with FDB (Fluid Dynamic Bearing). In order to keep the atmosphere clean even during operation - dirt particles could find their way inside when inserting the REV disk - each medium has a small particle filter as well, which constantly and automatically cleans the air rotating with the disk. An additional cleaning cycle then disposes of the dirt particles. In practice, this mechanism successfully decontaminates the write/read heads. A two-dimensional ECC test (line- and sector-oriented) also ensures a high data consistency, even in the case of data or reading errors.