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Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Waste of MoNEYYYYYYYY!!!

Written by CP from SAN FRANCISCO

22/03/2009

This is the worst IOMEGA product I have ever had in my life. Just look nice but work like a trash!!! I have used it for only 6 months but it is dying. It hangs many times and forced me to turn it off and on to be able to work again after I put my Mac sleep for a while. Makes my wallet crazyyyyyy.

9 of 11 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Good looking but poor build quality.

Written by AT from Leichhardt

9/03/2009

This is a good looking product but is marred by build quality. I have had my hard drive for about six months and so far the power switch has completely failed however long I press it. Fortunately plugging the power into the AC mains does mean it comes on. In addition the fan became extremely loud and permanently on. I use it RAID 0 mode for audio and video scratch files so have fixed the fan noise by disconnecting it. In addition if my Mac Pro goes to sleep the disk drive hangs with both disk access lights lit up and can only be fixed by unplugging it. Even if the disk drive is unmounted before sleep it still hangs when the machine wakes up. I would not use this drive for critical data.

11 of 11 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Good when it works

Written by SW from CIRENCESTER

6/03/2009

This drive has recently failed on me. Luckily I was backed up; I would not trust this drive after reading all the other negative reviews and from my own experience.

10 of 10 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Frustrating

Written by RM from Pentyrch

4/03/2009

When you buy a product like this, you don't want great things like fancy lights and sweet design. At the end of the day you just want a robust, reliable hard disc that works well and if it looks nice, it's a bonus.

This drive struggles to go the distance, doesn't like being moved and the power supply unit is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

There are better options out there.

6 of 6 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Power supply is the weakest link

Written by JG from London

14/01/2009

I bought two of these. The first started struggling to start up after about a year, traceable to the external power brick no longer supplying enough power. It finally started refusing to start up at all, and a warranty replacement from Iomega is now on the way (can't fault them for the zero-hassle replacement.)

Now my second power supply has also failed, so whilst I wait for the replacement I'm without access to either disk and I shall now have to arrange for a second one!

13 of 15 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Annoyingly Disappointing!

Written by MH from Ilford

2/01/2009

I bout this hard drive over many others mainly because of its size, features and obviously the looks.

But it was not worth it, as it just died within 8 months. I mean, it wont start up, I really don't know what's wrong with it. If anyone can suggest a guide then please do tell but for those who are considering on purchasing this, please, don't.

4 of 5 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Great industrial design, junk firmware

Written by DP from LONDON

30/11/2008

I bought the UltraMax for two reasons: the cheap RAID and the looks. The caddy is strong, well built and very handsome. However after just 3 months as a Time Machine drive (turned on once a week for a few hours) the HDD1 failure light began to come on intermittently. One day it came on and stayed on. Eventually after a few more power-on attempts the red light did not come on any more but from then on both HDD1 and HDD2 repeatedly froze after a few minutes connected to the Mac.

Two hard drives failing simultaneously? I think not. I dismantled the UltraMax and found a pair of unremarkable but serviceable Seagate Barracuda SATA drives inside, which are now installed in my Mac Pro and working perfectly.

Sadly it seems the drive control firmware in the UltraMax is junk. Of course I could have arranged for a replacement under warranty and you can too if it happens to you... but what is the point of a backup drive if I cannot have confidence in it?

17 of 18 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Died after less than a year

Written by NG from Milton Keynes

25/11/2008

Iomega will replace it under warranty, but won't cover the cost of data recovery. It looks good, and I like the interfaces, but it can't be recommended, especially at the price - there are other 1TB drives out there much cheaper.

When it works, it's fine, and FW800 is good to have. So is Raid, except that it makes data recovery a *lot* more expensive when the thing fails!!!

7 of 9 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

It worked well when it worked...

Written by AD from Birmingham

24/11/2008

It's been a matter of months, and it's now just clicking - unusable. Doesn't even load up on the computer.

4 of 4 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

640GB version clicking on Startup, and having problems after just 1 year!

Written by AK from Ballymakeera

23/09/2008

Bought this mainly for the firewire 800 plus the large capacity. I was very happy with the drive until last week, when for some reason, the drive wouldn't boot up and kept making a clicking noise. After some fiddling around, it appeared that when the ac-dc converter box for the unit heated up after being plugged in, the drive was able to start up.

I've still had no luck from a "cold" plug-in start. Could it be a possible power unit problem?

In any event, I've only had this drive for a year and have taken very good care of it, so there really is no excuse for it to be giving me problems after just 1 year!

In conclusion, when this drive works, it works great, but reliability could be an issue.

22 of 24 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Ultramax 1TB clicking on start up

Written by RP from Wokingham

24/08/2008

I have an Ultramax 1 TB set up for RAID 1 on which I store my iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie libraries (basically all my important data that is irreplaceable or would take some time to replace). This drive was purchased partly due to its feature set but also because I have had an Iomega 320GB single disk drive for 2 years (now used for time machine) which continues to work flawlessly.

The drive has worked well for about 40 weeks but now clicks for several minutes when I try to power it up. Reading other posts I fear that this is a sign that the drive may be about to fail, hopefully this is the same power supply issue that others have experienced rather than something more serious.

I have contacted Omega as the drive has 62 weeks warenty remaining and will let you know the outcome.

17 of 18 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Failure within 1 year

Written by TA from LARGS

26/06/2008

I purchased the 1Tb drive with a new iMac last year to provide a secure raid backup for images, only when I recently hit the maximum 500Gb in raid configuration I looked at a new drive and purchased the Drobo with 4 (1tb) drives. Luckily I copied everything over to the new Drobo a couple of weeks ago and only then reformatted the Iomega drive for time machine.

The drive has not moved from the desk for months yet last night it started to click and the drives would not spin up. If all my data had still been on the drive even with raid configured I am not sure what I would have done.

The drive was fast connected to the iMac firewire 800 port, 4000 odd images would transfer in under 10 minutes. But having researched more and more it appears that you get what you pay for and Iomega don't appear to have a strong reputation for creating reliable drives.

It is a great drive if you don't depend on a reliability and the ability to easily get to your data in the event of a failure.

25 of 27 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Flawed

Written by JD from Richmond

9/04/2008

Bought May '07 as server drive, mirrored. Power fault within the logic board after only 10 months. Not great for a product that gives the impression of robustness. Should work 3-4 years without fault. Thank god the drives haven't blown, but then they are made by seagate - so reliable.

32 of 48 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Hear the sound of the sea

Written by JH from MILTON KEYNES

10/03/2008

Unlike other drives we have (Iomega, Time Capsule) this baby puts out a lot of noise with the fans whining constantly, even when there is no disk activity. Not suitable for co-location with you. Should be behind closed doors.

It's an eery sound, like the wind blowing over a beach in the dead of winter. Or ghosts of long dead M$ developers moaning at the moon.

53 of 90 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Works well, but too noisy for me.

Written by PT from SOLIHULL

4/11/2007

I recently moved over to an iMac, partly because of the low noise levels - and with Leopard I was keen to use Time Machine and the Iomega seemed the ideal solution.
However it is extremely noisy - noisier in fact than the PC I replaced with the iMac. The problem is not the dual drives but the small high speed fan used to cool them.
Otherwise it worked fine, so if noise is not an issue then go ahead - it works as described, but if you value a quiet working environment, I would look elsewhere.

I returned the item to the Apple store for a refund (which was very painless - thank you Apple).

91 of 94 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Avoid this drive

Written by DR from London

18/10/2007

Unless you're a real technical expert and have time to research all the problems you'll encounter, I'd recommend avoiding this drive entirely.

The documentation is awful - and just plain wrong is some places. If you want to change from the default RAID 0 configuration, you'll probably end up with 2 red lights which the manual says means the hard drives have failed. In reality, you just need to hold 'rebuild' for 10 seconds.

I had all sorts of problems after switching to RAID 1, with the drive simply not being recognised at all. Even now, the only way I can get it to work is with Firewire 400 (slower than USB2).

The case is solid, but it's really too big for a 2 drive enclosure, and the fans are quite noisy too. I also find the extremely bright LEDs on the front which light up my whole room at night quite annoying.

69 of 99 people found this useful

Iomega 1TB UltraMax Hard Drive with Triple Interface + USB/FireWire Hub

Another Dead on Arrival

Written by HH from WIRRAL

2/05/2007

Bought the 600 GB version, seems no longer available here. Super fast delivery, but dead on arrival. Some hours online and on the phone later (no, it does not mount) a replacement drive was sent. Works fine, I find size / noise / speed ok. Not a good start for the buddy I am putting all my photos and songs on, but I guess time will will tell...

18 of 27 people found this useful