Home

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

Ideal Time Machine external HDD

Written by WP from STOCKPORT

19/12/2007

I purchased this 1TB external HDD from an Apple Retail store specifically for the purpose of Time Machine backups of my MacBook which has an almost full 250GB internal HDD; because Time Machine stores all the changes to the system I figured a this amount of headroom was justified. I plug another FireWire drive into the back of this so that I can access 2 FireWire drives even though my MacBook has only a single FireWire connection.

I chose this drive because of the FW400 and FW800 interface (my next Mac might have FW800) and for the hardware RAID capability. It ships with RAID0 which is ideal for Time Machine; I don't see any reason to compromise capacity and performance (by using the RAID1 setting) if you use this drive solely for Time Machine.

To answer previous criticisms/queries: Press and hold the Power button for a second to start the drive up. Fan noise has been acceptable but during disk access the enclosure does seem to amplify the clatter and rattle of all the disk activity---but no more intrusive than the internal HDDs in a PC.

In summary I think this drive hits the sweet spot by including the features I want and saving me money by not including features I don't need. Highly recommended.

100 of 118 people found this useful

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

A great product but keep it cool

Written by VG from ELLON

8/08/2007

This really is a lovely enclosure, it's got everything you'll possibly ever need and probably more and for the price you really can't go wrong. if you need to upgrade it at any point or change out a drive if one dies, it's simple to do.

i got mine and honestly the most annoying part of it is the LED light for the power on the front. it's very bright and if it's at eye level, it's quite distracting. a simple hack in the case did wonders for that.

buy one of these, they're not overpriced, which seems to be one of the most annoying things about terabyte raid enclosures.

39 of 45 people found this useful

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

Amazing Hard Drive

Written by NW from LONDON

18/10/2007

I have had this product for almost a year now and have had no problems. Works perfectly and very fast.

Great Product.

38 of 46 people found this useful

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

Very very reliable

Written by SN from London

18/10/2007

Have had two of these capital drives for a while, no problems. They work reliably on Firewire 800, with which I have experienced many problems with other drives. A truly great product. Many years ago I had occasion to write to the CEO of Iomega about some problem, and I had an extremely quick and effective and satisfactory response. So far, I trust Iomega with my data. VERDICT: a good drive from a manufacturer who cares about customers.

34 of 38 people found this useful

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

Great product - Cool running and quiet

Written by DS from Brighton

27/09/2007

Don't believe the reviews(!) These drives are very reliable. To turn on, hold in the power button for about 5 seconds to turn the drive on and do the same to turn off manually.
Great power management - turns itself off when you unmount it.
Its a gorgeous case the complements the mac - rock solid and full metal. It runs quietly and very cool unlike many drives I've used before.
Full Marks!

31 of 38 people found this useful

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

Works Great!!!

Written by SM from CARLISLE

30/04/2007

Had this now for a few months to work as a backup for my Mac Pro. Using SuperDuper it's great! Not one problem since I received it. Just plugged it in and it worked no problem at all.

23 of 26 people found this useful

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

Superb Product

Written by SW from Malvern

27/01/2008

Absolutely superb, simple to hook up & does exactly what it says on the tin. Set up with Time Machine is oh so simple. Apple takes some beating for design & build quality but Iomega run them pretty close on this one.
Some reviewers report fan noise but in my experience this is no worse & probably a lot better than the average PC cooling fan. Activity/access noises are a lot less than on comparable drives. In short, masses of storage, beautiful design, good price...why would you not buy one?

40 of 61 people found this useful

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

Great Product, Great Price

Written by GN from Ashford

14/06/2007

Have had this since the beginning of April, bought direct from the Apple Ireland Store. Using it with a Dell D620 laptop (while I wait for a C2D Mini) and haven't had a problem - 600gigs of music and movie's on it. Worked straight out of the box, included all the necessary cables, etc. Great price, great build, great product.

Remember having an Iomega CD Writer back in the 90's and it was an awful piece of hardware, thankfully no problems yet with this. Delivery from Apple was fantastic, ordered it on a Monday and it arrived on a Tuesday.

24 of 30 people found this useful

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

Excellent harddrive which runs quietly and reliably.

Written by DM from Kingston Upon Hull

18/02/2008

I don't understand how anyone can write that this harddrive is noisy? It sits right next to my macbook pro while I work all day everyday running time machine and it runs quickly and quietly. I hardly even realise when it does its updates!

I run it on firewire 800 and the performance is stunning. I would greatly recommend one of these if you need this quality of storage. Now all I need is for Apple to make time machine available to run on an external harddrive over an airport extreme!

35 of 53 people found this useful

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

Day 1 Review

Written by BD from London

13/01/2008

Just bought this today as a time machine drive for my macbook pro and also as a storage area for long-term, large files that I dont necessarily want cluttering up my internal drive.

Worked fine out of the box. Powered up, Leopard asked if I wanted to make this a time machine drive, which i did, it did a full system backup and has been doing hourly ones every since, as expected.

I've ejected and powered it down a few times to make sure it all works fine. Left it in default RAID 0 config and probably won't change that, despite thinking about it.

I'll let you know if i encounter any issues.

36 of 55 people found this useful

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

Disappointed

Written by GG from BRISTOL

7/06/2008

Just what I wanted a good quality external drive with Firewire 800. Looks good with plenty of ventilation to keep the drive cool. Bought 2 so that I can be doubly sure my data is safe. One Power Supply fails, no problem the Iomega web support assures me that my purchase is still under guarantee. PROBLEM no more response from Iomega WHATSOEVER. It is not even convenient as a DOOR STOP! I do apologise I have found a use for the mains lead it fits my shaver.

24 of 33 people found this useful

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

works beautifully

Written by MN from Birmingham

30/09/2007

just bought one today and so far so good specially the back up software that comes with it although if you are a toast titanium user just use deja vo its much simpler to set up, well its got my thumbs up...

20 of 25 people found this useful

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

Fantastic features for the price.

Written by KM from Glasgow

18/02/2008

This particular external drive system from iomega actually over-delivers on it's promises. What is not clear from the product description is that this is an intelligent controller with 2 physical drives inside. It can be configured for various types of RAID etc and represents fantastic value for money. It is very quiet and runs nice and cool. Access is fast via FireWire or USB2. I highly recommend it.

30 of 47 people found this useful

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

1TB external hard drive - works flawlessly

Written by CM from Rayleigh

25/11/2008

I've been so impressed with this product that I now have 2 sitting besides my laptop and a third under consideration.

I use 1 for Time Machine & my extensive photo library (2 paritions) and 1 for my video library. I may soon buy a 3rd drive so that I can 1 for photos, 1 for Time Machine and 1 for vidoe.

The drive comes with an extremely easy to use RAID capability that requires no technical knowledge or expertise. There are 2 500Gb drives inside each enclosure and jumper switches on the back determine either RAID0 (concatenation - 1Tb) or RAID1 (mirror - 500gb) configuration. Both my units are set to RAID1, which means that I effectively have 500Gb external drives. However, it also means that all my data is mirrored. In the event of a hard-disk failure, I would loose nothing and my system would carry on as normal. Having said that, I don't know what would happen in the event of a hard disk failure and what the procedure would ned to be to recover from it. If I drop a replacement 500Gb drive back into the box, I don't know if the unit will then automagically re-sync the data to the new drive.

I have my 2 enclosures daisy-chained to the FW800 slot on my Macbook Pro and can report no problems with them after more than a year of usage.

The power LEDs on the front panel are far too bright (I've stuck a bit of tape over them to reduce the glare) - a particular problem after sunset since they are in my front room and watching TV was difficult with those lights.

The disks seem to spin up and down all the time. This is due to the unit taking itself offline after innactivity and spinning the disks down. The laptop subsequently produces activity (for example because an open dialogue has been activated or something wants to access a volume in the background) from time to time causing them to spin up again. After the disks have spun down, it can be a bit annoying having to wait those few seconds for the disks to spin up again before open dialoges and other OS activities can then proceed again. Even if the laptop is awake but I'm not using it, the OS still seems to do something every now and then that causes the disks to spin up again. Annoying but not necessarily a problem with the drive itself. Sometimes I dismount the drives and unplug them - but that then prevents Time Machine backups from working.

I have had no problems with disk failures and can willingly recommend the drive. It could be a bit cheaper for the amount of disk space but there aren't a lot of ready-to-use RAID1 capable drives out there that are much cheaper.

9 of 10 people found this useful

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

Video editing needs this device

Written by DO from Tuam

17/06/2008

I do quite a bit of editing of AVCHD video. Whilst the original video is small, once the Apple intermediate CODECS are used during an import, the resulting video for editing purposes is huge. An external firewire 1TB drive (though USB also works niceley) is just the ticket.

Tips:

1) Do occasionally use the built-in tools in OS X to CHECK the drive is OK and if necessary repair or reformat (particularly if its being bounced about in aircraft checked-in baggage). I was loosing frames or worse during AVCHD video import - ALL resolved once I used tools as mentioned.

2) As other's have stated, the power switch needs to have pressure applied for a few seconds before the device starts or stops. i.e. a quick press is insufficient.

Good stuff:

1) This is getting cheaper & cheaper and becoming a no-brainer investment for such a great device.

2) For those with the '800' type firewire interface, (e.g. recent iMacs and MAC Pros), there is a noticeable speed increase with the processing of big video files.

3) Also works well with slower firewire and USB2.


Not so Good:

1) A bit noisy, the cooling fan 'hunts' i.e. its speed is ALWAYS changing. No good if you are doing voiceover work with the microphone and drive in front of you.

2) This might sound silly (well O.K. it is silly)., but the blue lighting inside the case is TOO bright. I wish I could switch it off.

9 of 11 people found this useful

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

Just The Job

Written by JD from Co.MEath

25/01/2008

I have been using a lower grade version of this hard drive the Iomega 600GB for well over a year now.. If this new upgrade is anything like its poor relation - go for it.. Its a dream to use and an idiots toy. Plug in .. Connect lead to computer ... Switch on .. and it just WORKS.. simple as that.. Go for it..

24 of 41 people found this useful

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

Good Drive

Written by AR from WHITBY

25/11/2007

Have had the drive for a few months now and all i can say is that it has been faultless, the drive size is nice, not too big and you can stack them if you need more storage, comes with all cabling for all connectors, USB, Firewire 400, 800

The drive is very quiet for me, compared to my Formac drive it is way ahead, far quieter and more reliable in a smaller form factor [don't go near Formac god!]

Would recommend this drive to anyone

7 of 8 people found this useful

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

Definately Worth the Pricetag.

Written by JH from Auckland

20/10/2007

I purchased this hard-drive about 4 months ago, and so far I'm very pleased. I've had no problems, and its the best looking external HDD I've ever seen.

It comes preformatted for the Mac with HFS+ which makes it even easier to setup, so its definately worth the 5 star rating I'm giving it.

6 of 6 people found this useful