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Iomega 750 MB External USB 2.0 Zip Drive

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 | Reviews, USB Removable Drives

The Iomega 750 drive sets a new size spec for their Zip drives. With the popularity of other portable devices like memory sticks and rewritable CDs and DVDs Zip drives have lost their place as the formidable movable mass storage device.

They have not completely lost their usefulness however. As with most other “new” products which are just more advanced reworks of older technology, Iomega have released a drive that can handle 750MB disks.

Main features include…

• Support for 750MB zip disks
• Backward compatibility with their older disks
• USB 2.0 connectivity
• Install guides and useful software applications

The drive is very slim, which gives a lot to it in the looks department, and with its metal gray color its good looking. The slim profile doesn’t do much for the fact that you actually need to carry a power supply for it. That’s not too bad seeing as its not small enough to fit in your pocket anyway.

It has plenty of instructions for easy install with all operating systems including Macs. You do need to install software and will probably not be supported with the standard driver package that comes with Windows. No hassles install though.

Seeing as Iomega have been around now in the mass storage arena the Iomega 750 drive comes with an impressive array of software. This is extremely useful as they have truly added everything that someone looking this kind of drive would need.

I’m always impressed when a manufacturer has obviously done its homework to backup its product. There is automatic backup software which allows you to specify what to backup and how frequently, you can also choose how many of the older copies to keep before starting to delete them. Sync software allows you to sync files between your Iomega 750 drive and your computer and other computers. You would have to install the software on each, but it would work well for example between work and home. A special utility lets you run applications from the disk without installing which is really cool.

Compatiblity with old disks is alright and will read most, but not all, if you’re upgrading, save the data to hard disk or elsewhere first and then transfer to your new disks.

Speed is similar to a CDR or slower, not impressive, but alright.

Overall this drive is a good buy for big backups, and its security features and software package make it very useful. It doesn’t do as well in terms of portability as a USB flash memory stick, but does have its place.

Pros

• Security features
• Fully-featured software package
• Good looks
• Decent speed

Cons

• Needs power supply
• Not complete backward compatibility