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Iomega REV drives?
Yesterday, I had a FireWire heart attack, one of those, ” oh crap, it won’t boot, must be going or gone” episodes with one of the LaCie drives I use with my business machine. I’ve been keeping an eye on it lately since it’s about 4 years old and in constant use, and last month it had been clicking, but I re-formatted it and that went away. I had been backing it up regularly, should’ve the night before but didn’t, so I had that sinking feeling that anything new was lost.
Fortunately, Disk Warrior saved it (for now anyway) but I was about to post a question about any available dependability surveys or lists on FireWire drives when a Google passed on the idea of using an Iomega REV drive for backup/archiving. Up to 70 gigs on a disc.
Now, I have been a ZIP user since they came out, so more than 10 years I’d say, and in all that time have used literally thousands of the little buggers. The agency I used to work at archived all print jobs on them, they were under constant and brutal use by 20 people, never saw one fail. I think I’ve had one or two go unreadable on me and one break, but they can be re-formatted and live again. So I have real world experienced with one of Iomega’s products, and like them, so I wonder what anyone thinks of them for a similar use for video, via the REV drives? Looks good to me, any cons?
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17 Replies
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Shoulda mentioned I’m talking about the new FireWire versions.
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Clicking is a death sentence. Start backinug up immediately. I don’t know about REV drives, but your other drive’s time can probably be counted in days or minutes. Your procedure has been done by many of us. Clicking, dies, disk warrior, fixes, later more clicking, dead.
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Bret,
Yes, I know, I have personally lost 3 LaCie drives and had 3 go bad at other places. Oh and I had one Maxtor do the same thing.
Anyways, it is duly backed up, just waiting for the final gasp and wheeze of death!
Still wondering what anyone thinks of the REV drive idea…
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Sorry to hear you problems but you seem to know the value of back ups.
We used to use zips a lot. Every internal drive we installed (probably 6 or 7) failed within a year. The externals were much more reliable but “click death” killed a few. And a damaged cartridge could kill several drives before the problem was detected.The “Jazz” was terrible. You could not reliably share a cartridge between drives. We installed 3 of these and sent them back within a month. Iomega was less than helpful.
In short, I do not trust Iomega products.
My experience with lacie has been the opposite of yours. We have at least 10 of the D2 250 and 500 gig drives. The oldest (3+ years) are out in the field constantly. We lost 1 due to pilot error. And lost a few power supplies, But the D2 series drives have been bullet-proof for us.
joe
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But what DRIVE is in a LaCie? If a batch of LaCie’s goes bad or is flawless, we need to be pinpointing the guts, not the shell. Of course these days a better box can make a difference as well, with fanless systems and all. But I think generally it’s the drive. Hitachi, Seagate, Maxto, WD, etc. I don’t trust IBM (Hitachi) drives. I’ve killed a couple of them, whilst in the same computer Western Digital and Maxtor were flawless. I’ve killed a seagate too, but they have such a good warranty now I’m buying them and have been happy.
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I think the REV idea will be gone. Blu Ray is already making it obsolete. 24gig Blu Ray for $20-$30 is right in line with the cost of your REV disks. And in the future it’ll gain more density/storage. Just like CD-Rom and DVD disks, you can probably expect Blu-Ray to be compatible in more systems for a longer period of time than REV.
REV will go the way of zip and jaz. Both of which I have transferred to CD and DVD.
In fact, you can buy USB and FireWire hard drives for the same price of REV drives, so what’s the point?
That’s my .02.
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I would agree. With all the cheap hard drive options out there, just pick up a few extra drives and clone away.
At least until the holographic stuff gets cheap.
https://www.inphase-technologies.com/technology/index.html
joe
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The Rev drives are expensive.
For my own working RAID and archives I’ve been using Hitachi drives in a Firmtek hot-swap system. I’ve been using a Firmtek host adapter for three years and started using the hot-swap Firmtek enclosure for two years.
So far no failures, and I have 15 of these on my shelf.
They’re not for gorillas. Because they’re just bare drives in sleds they do need to be handled and stored with reasonable care.
Cost is very reasonable. I just bought four 500-GB drives and sleds from Other World Computing for $793, including shipping. They’re being set up as two mirrored RAIDs.
Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii
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[Chris Poisson] “Looks good to me, any cons?”
Chris,
While your experience has been good, you are apprently in the minority. Just check the history of Iomega’s value on the stockmarket. Its abissmal… The company’s product failure rate and return rate made it a laughing stock of Wall Street. As far as the REV product goes, its cost per gigabyte is huge at a time when storage prices have thankfully fallen though the floor. Just get youself one of the new Hitachi 1Tb drives for backup when they come out next month. The odds of your original and a BU failing are kind of the same as being struck by lightning.
DRW
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Me too,
Nothing but failures and heartache with Jazz – hopeless.
Alan
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