Iomega Network Hard Drive
I bought the Iomega StorCenter Network Hard Drive Gigabit Ethernet 250GB a couple of months ago as a shared storage facility for all the computers we seem to have lying around here. A couple of things attracted me to it: firstly I thought Iomega was likely to produce well-made products. And secondly it offers Gigabit Ethernet connection speeds. So when I eventually upgrade my router to run at this speed, in theory I will be able to read and write data at speeds approaching 1000 MB/s, which leaves Firewire and USB2.0 standing. And over a network too
Appearance
The drive is good-looking, coming in smooth black case, looking something like an overweight black ipod. It has a really cool blue light that indicates network traffic. It feels very sturdy.
Connecting
It seems that you need a special helper application (called the ‘Iomega Discovery Tool’) to help your computer talk to the drive. It would be better if the operating system could just interface with the drive directly instead of having to install an extra piece of software. However, the Discovery Tool is set to run automatically at startup and seems to work well in both OSX and Windows XP. The only annoying thing is that if you turn on the drive after starting up your computer, you have to run the tool manually before you can use the drive, which makes things more cumbersome than using a standard USB/Firewire external hard drive.
Transfer speeds with the drive seem to be fine, considering I use it over a standard Fast Ethernet connection, so I guess I’d be lucky to get more than 80 MB/s anyway.
Noise
Things are looking pretty rosy so far. Unfortunately the drive has a critical flaw. It is extremely noisy. When you first start it up, everything seems fine – in fact the drive is completely silent. However, after 10 minutes or so, a cooling fan comes on for about 1 minute. And it sounds like a hairdryer. And this happens again after another 10 minutes. And so on. It is disruptive.
I can’t understand why Iomega have designed the drive in this way. It is squarely aimed at the home market, with various ‘media jukebox’ features. But who is going to be happy sitting in their living room with the hairdryer going off all the time? If it was wireless I could hide it in a cupboard. But my router is located in my living room, so I’m stuck. I contacted Iomega about it and they pointed me to some small print about the fact that the drive may make some noise during normal usage.
More problems
Over the past few weeks I’ve been having another problem with the Storcenter Network Hard Drive. It sometimes fails to connect to the network when you first turn it on, often requiring two or three restarts before it can connect.
Conclusion
So basically, this drive is not a good buy. The promise of Gigabit Ethernet seems very tempting. The build quality is seductive. But the noise is frankly unacceptable. And other reliability issues seem to be emerging. Try something else.
Update: I’ve returned this drive now, and got a Western Digital NetCenter 320Gb drive instead. This drive has no fan and runs absolutely quietly. So much better! The only thing it lacks is the Gigabit Ethernet connection. Since I don’t have a Gigabit Ethernet router yet, this doesn’t matter too much in practice.
Ben Hayes at 1:00 pm on 6 Aug 06
Hi Ben:
I also bought the StorCenter 250G and concur about the fan noise. More seriously, it failed completely after only 6 weeks of operation. Of course, Iomega will take it back but this is the second Iomega network drive that I have had to return so I am now looking elsewhere. In my American baseball mind, two strikes and you are out. Can’t afford the time to give them another try.
Take care, Ralph
Ralph Locher at 1:01 pm on 4 Apr 07
Yeah, look elsewhere.
I’ve recently gone off the whole idea of network drives. It’s just too much hassle to have to run a program to connect each time you boot up, and the transfer speed isn’t great either.
I’m now using a Lacie Rugged mobile drive plugged into the Firewire 800 port on my laptop and it’s just so much easier and faster. I can just plug the drive into another computer if I need to share something. It’s not ideal but the home network drives just don’t seem to be that great yet.
Ben Hayes at 1:02 pm on 5 Apr 07
I’ve had the same experience with poor reliability. I’m also having problems with my second StorCenter, having returned the first to the retailer after a very frustrating experience with Iomega support. Hopefully this one will be going the same way; I’ll be exchanging for a USB product. The network drive tries to be a PC in a (small, noisy) box, with only a two-colour LED to tell you what’s going on, and no way of controlling the device at all until it’s successfully attached to the network.
One further point – prior to the return of my first drive, I asked Iomega how I could wipe my data from the drive before its return. Not only did I not get a meaningful answer, but I got the feeling that they didn’t understand (or see the relevance of) the question. I was tempted to remove the drive itself from the case and wipe/zero-fill it using a PC. The drive is however not connectable in this way, as it seems to use a proprietary format. If you do try one of these drives, I’d recommend saving only encrypted or non-personal data to it until you’re out of warranty.
In short, avoid!
Mike Keal at 1:03 pm on 23 Aug 07
I have the 500GIG version. I have had trouble connecting and I get unreadable messages from Discovery Software. BUT, the main problem is that on Copy and Paste under Explore it drops files. Now that is a backup that I can live without!!
Try something else
Jim
Jim at 6:31 pm on 3 Feb 09
I bought a 250 gig storcenter in mid 07 and discontinued using it after about six months as it appeared to fail (the unit would disconnect itself and shut down mysteriously). It has sat in a box until recently, as I had the need for a backup, I reinstalled the unit after deleting all the associated software (restropect back up program and Iomega software). I used the win xp found new hardware wizard, which promptly found the drive, now the drive works fine and I am able to use it just fine, each of my networked computers recognizes the drive and all the backed up files were in fact still on the drive!! I am able to move and copy files to it as I would any of the machine hard drives, all without using the Iomega or retrospect software. I’m of the opinion that the software was causing my problems. I do leave the unit on at all times, so I have not tried to disconnect and reconnect. Anyway, thought I’d add my two cents.
Mark at 6:00 pm on 28 Feb 09
The drive does not need the discover tool for your pc to see it. Simply find it in Windows explorer, and select “map network drive”.
Agree its really noisy!
Jon at 11:49 am on 6 Mar 09
@Jon: wonder if that would work from a Mac
Ben Hayes at 11:59 am on 6 Mar 09
Yea, i’m trying to set my 500 gig one up myself, for my mac and my dads pc. Encountered some small problems myself but ill give it another shot this afternoon. Ill be sure to let you know.
Matt at 11:54 am on 16 Jun 09