 "Iomega Prestige SuperSpeed USB 3.0 (1TB) Review")
Hard drive prices are crazy high, right now and it is probably not the best time to be upgrading your storage. However, for those who have no choice, be prepared to shell out a premium for storage space. Today, we have with us Iomega’s Prestige series external drive with USB 3.0 and a 1TB storage capacity. If your internal hard drive slots are full-up or you simply don’t have enough juice in your PSU to drive another hard drive, external desktop drives are your best bet.
Good looks and built well
Features and Design
Although this is a desktop drive, the Prestige is designed to be more of a portable option, rather than something you place on your desk and forget about. With a weight of 1kg and a thickness of 31.4mm, it can easily be slipped into a bag, if you need to take your data with you. The drive is encased in an all-metal chassis with a brushed aluminium finish. The front portion has a glossy plastic bit and you’d expect a LED activity light to be placed underneath, but it isn’t. Instead, the LED light is placed at the back of the drive, along the edge, which is kind of a weird place to put it. The drive does come with a stand, so it can be propped on the table.
USB 3.0 port
Since this is a 3.5-inch drive, it does require an external power source to run. Iomega have used a Samsung SpinPoint F2EG hard drive, which features a 32MB buffer and a speed of 5400rpm. It is a SATA II drive and not SATA III, but we doubt you’ll benefit from the latter through USB 3.0. There’s a physical power button in the back, which lets you switch power the drive on and off without having to reach for the mains. The drive is silent and has very little vibrations during normal operations. Next, lets see how it performs.
Performance
With the drive connected to our testbench, which consists of a Core i7-2600K and a P67 motherboard, we ran the Iomega through our regular series of tests. The internal drive used was a WD Velociraptor to avoid any bottlenecks. In HD Tach, we recorded a sequential read speed of 82 MB/s. The rest of the scores are in the chart below.
Good performance
The speeds in all the tests were close to what one would typically expect from a USB 3.0 external drive. The real world tests confirm the speeds we got in the synthetic tests. The read speeds of the Iomega to an internal drive are really good, topping out at roughly 91 MB/s and so were the write speeds. The USB 3.0 cable has a decent enough length, so you can comfortably place your drive on your desktop, while your chassis sits on the floor. The drive does get a little warm after a few hours of use, but nothing alarming. Overall, we were quite impressed with the performance of the drive, given its slim form factor.
Verdict
With the street price set at Rs.7,500, the Iomega SuperSpeed USB 3.0 is a very good option, considering the high price of internal hard drives. Iomega has done a good job with the build and finish of the drive and USB 3.0 is an added bonus. If we had to nitpick, then we wished they placed the hard drive activity light somewhere in the front, so it would be easier to see. Other than that, we don’t have many complaints and would recommend this to anyone looking for a external desktop drive that’s also portable.
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