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Iomega REV REV drive 35 GB

External - USB 2.0
8 offers from £227.15 to £269.08


A review by the Ciao member Mark20 about Iomega REV REV drive 35 GB

published on 21.04.2006

A Very Good Home/Office Backup Drive

Author's product rating:

Reliability	Good
Ease of Installation	Satisfactory
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Fast Backup, Nice and Compact, Very Easy To Use
Disadvantages:	Limited backup capabilities, bundled software is terrible

Recommend to potential buyers:	yes
Overall rating:	excellent good average poor very poor

In my job as an IT Consultant you have to do your best to try and get the best equipment set to a budget. So for some of my clients who have a small network this backup drive is just ideal for them.

So... let me begin this review with some technical information

Specification
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General
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Compatibility: PC

Weight: 0.4 kg

Height: 3.6 cm

Depth: 15.6 cm

Width: 11 cm

Interface: Hi-Speed USB

Enclosure Type: External

Device Type: Iomega REV drive

Expansion / Connectivity
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Interfaces: 1 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 PIN USB Type B

Manufacturer Warranty
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Service & Support Details: Limited warranty - 2 years

Software / System Requirements
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System Requirements Details: Pentium II - 333 MHz - RAM 128 MB - HD 100 MB

OS Required: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, Microsoft Windows 2000 Server SP4, Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional SP4

Software Included: Drivers & Utilities, Iomega Automatic Backup Pro

Environmental Parameters
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Humidity Range Operating 8 - 90%

Max Operating Temperature 45 °C

Min Operating Temperature 0 °C

Media Type: Iomega REV

Average Seek / Access Time: 13 ms

Data Transfer Rate: 60 MBps (external) / 25.4 MBps (internal)

Capacity: 35 GB

Setup
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Now providing your system meets the recommended requirements you should have minimal problems configuring this drive. To be honest the bundled software Iomega Automatic Backup PRO is absoultely rubbish there is so many bugs in the software that reliable backups I feel cannot always be achieved.

So to combat this the best thing I would suggest is to purchase a seperate backup software such as Symantec Backup Exec 10 (formally known as Veritas). If you are looking for a low cost backup solution that is reliable and will use the full compression on the REV drive then it may be worth checking out NOVABACKUP 7.3 its reasonably priced and does the job very well.

Compression Ratio
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Now this drive is capable of backing up your files to a maximum of 90GB this isnt always the case and to be honest you will be lucky with the best software to get anymore than 65GB. If your overall network backup is less than 30GB you wont have any problems in the slightest!

Points To Be Aware Of
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1. Although this drive is ideal for home or a small office in an expanding business its not unusual for this drive to become too small alot of my clients have outgrown this drive and moved onto something alot larger.

2. Compression ratio can be misleading its best to work your backup size on about 35GB

3. Bundled software is very tempermental be sure to read documentation very closely and read up on known issues with the software before implementing.

Overall Value For Money
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Ideal for home users and the small business reasonably priced and when configured correctly is a very good piece of kit.

Price Tag
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Depending on your supplier prices vary.

Misco: £259.99 Ex VAT (includes 5 bundled Media)

Extra Media is available at a cost of £30.99 Ex VAT per cartridge although I have seen packs of 5.


Thank you for reading! 

Memory / capacity	Good
Design	Good
Ease of use	Satisfactory
Instruction manual	Satisfactory
Manufacturer Support	Satisfactory
Speed	Fast

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