Iomega's REV Marks Leap Forward For External Drives

Features
By published

Test System

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Hardware
ProcessorIntel Pentium 4, 2.0 GHz256 kB L2 Cache (Willamette)
MotherboardIntel 845EBTIntel 845E ChipsetBIOS BT84520A.86A.0024.P10
Memory256 MB DDR/PC2100, CL2.0Micron/Crucial
Controlleri845E UltraDMA/100-Controller (ICH4)On-Board USB 2.0 (ICH4)On-Board FireWire
Graphics CardATI Radeon SDRAM, 32 MB
Network3COM 905TX PCI 100 MBit
OSWindows XP Pro 5.10.2600 SP1
Drivers & Settings
Graphics Driver5.1.2001.0 (Windows XP Standard)
IDE DriverIntel INF Drivers 5.02.1003
DirectX-Version9.0b
Resolution1024x768, 16 Bit, 85 Hz refresh
Test Software
xxcopyVersion 2.85.5a, Freeware

Other programs for measuring transfer rates and access times of optical drives have failed so far as well because they cannot cope with the REV's capacity. Since the CD/DVD benchmarks use "real" data, as opposed to low-level benchmarks, our results are not the final word: a different data set could produce different results.

Data Transfer Rate

We obtained the following results using the copying program xxcopy 2.85.5a. It generates a post-procedure report for determining the real transfer rates.

The maximum value of 24.5 MBps stated by Iomega is absolutely realistic in this regard and in view of the rotation speed of 4,200 rpm. We can say the same for the minimum transfer rate under ideal conditions: Here, Iomega promises approximately 12.7 MBps. The REV is absolutely suitable for real-time saving of big data streams (e.g., video).

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DataMeasured Transfer Rates
Small files (5286 files, 760 MB)5.2 MB/s
Large files (15 files, 5.2 GB)21.4 MB/s
Large & small files (49,887 files, 27.9 GB)11.9 MB/s