Need recommendation: Iomega 500GB

I need to purchase another external HD with a lot of memory for my Mac. I have a LaCie 500 GB, but have had problems with this in past. I saw an online ad for the Iomega 500 GB Ultramax Desktop HD. Wanted to know if this item is worth purchasing, or if you can recommend another brand that does not come with the headaches LaCie offers. Thanks.

I've used Iomegas briefly before. Maybe good enough for ordinary usage, but I've never found them reliable enough for editing. Go with the tried-and-true -- Seagate, Promax, G-Tech. Resist the urge to buy those shiny cute Maxtors, Lacies and Western Digitals in Staples, Best Buy and Office Depot. All three suck. By contrast, my eight-year-old 42GB Promax FireWire 400 drive, purchased in 2000, is still running today, and I have four rotating Promax drives ranging from 180GB to 500GB. None of those has even failed to mount once on my computer in five years.

Also, make sure you format the drives properly (Mac OS Extended, non-journalled) before use, and if you're using external drives, you must have a copy of DiskWarrior with you at all times.

One more thing: You're buying "storage", not "memory". Memory is RAM, not disk space.


www.derekmok.com

Grass Valley uses Iomega so maybe they have improved. Thing is you just never hear of anyone other than GV Infinity users who have the Rev Pro drives ever talk about Iomega. So none of us really know anything about them.

Michael Horton
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Drives don't have memory...they have disk space. What are you using it for? DV? HDV? DVCPRO-HD? Necessary information for a good recommendation.

BTW...nothing comes with as many headaches as LaCie does. As a company, I haven't bought anything Iomega since a ZIP 250 disk drive back in '98. As an editor / compositor, I stick with companies that are well versed in A/V like CalDigit and G-Technology. They use Hitachi drives and they answer the phone & emails when you have questions. You can't imagine how important that is until you have questions on a crushing deadline. I have used G-Tech G-RAIDs for years but I am leaning towards CalDigit for my next purchase just because of the excellent Customer Service contacts I have made there. They seem like good people that care about making a good SOLID product.

LaCie...well...gets their drives from alternate vendors including Maxtor & Western Digital (2 drive companies I dispise - lost a few of those HDs before). You never know what's inside those things.

[www.caldigit.com]

[www.g-technology.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I need this for DV projects that can be quite long. Eventually I would like to move to DVCPro-HD.

I will look into Promax and G-Tech, as those seem to work for those who have responded.

What would I use Disk Warrior for? Also, where is G-Tech sold?

OMU

> What would I use Disk Warrior for?

DiskWarrior only does one thing, but it does that well: Repair disk directories, which tell the computer where the data resides on a drive. External drives are prone to having that directory corrupted, and when that happens, even if the actual data is intact, the drive doesn't know it's there -- usually that manifests in the drive not mounting at all.

> Also, where is G-Tech sold?

Apple Stores now carry them. But Joe already gave you G-Technology's weblink above.

If you want to use these same drives for future DVCPro HD, then get at least FireWire 800 drives. FireWire 400 is only good for DV. Most Promax and G-Tech drives I know, have both FireWire 400 and 800 ports. But think ahead. Many drives only have one FireWire 400 port but two FireWire 800 ones. If you're daisy-chaining for DV, then you need to know how many ports you need. Or, stock up on some FireWire 800-400 adapter cables.


www.derekmok.com

MAXX

I have a G Raid 1TB external, use it with my MacBook Pro... it has been flawless... editing huge format too (1920x1080 HD) in Prores 422. I Highly recommend it.

i have an iomega drive that for some reason i could never capture to it. but once i captured to another drive then moved the project to the iomega, its worked just fine for several years - go figure.

i also have OWC drives, promax and caldigit. none have given me any problems.

i do also have three of last years crop of (nobody yell now) maxtor onetouch lll drives and they have been working under pretty grueling conditions for about 6 months or so without any problems

derekmok Wrote:
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> Also, make sure you format the drives properly
> (Mac OS Extended, non-journalled) before use, ...

Derek, I have a question about the above. In the Shane Ross Creative Cow DVD Tutorial, Getting Organized With Final Cut Pro, Shane says to pick Mac OS extended (Journaled) or Mac OS Extended. Why would he pick Journaled as his first option and why do you say Non-Journaled?

P.S. Thanks for that bit about Disk Warrior. I have it on my system but didn't really get what it was for!

OMU, How outdated a Mac are you using anyway?

--
Eric Harnden
Quintessential Studios
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[wordpress.quintessentialstudios.net]
[twitter.com]

It is a G4, silverplated. Unfortunately, I got a prehistoric version of FCP 3.0 with it which I still use.

If you get a new one get a caldigit..

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

> With Final Cut Pro, Shane says to pick Mac OS extended (Journaled) or Mac OS Extended.

In theory journalling is supposed to be not great for editing, but quite frankly, I've never seen any problems caused by a journalled drive. So it's not likely to be a big deal. Journalling is useful for non-editing applications, though, so it's your call as to which route you want to go. I wouldn't lose much sleep over it. The important thing is not to leave the drive as it was formatted upon purchase; unless you buy from a place like Promax, it's likely the drive is formatted FAT32 and you'll have a very nasty 2GB limit on all files being saved to that drive. And those drives cannot be "merged" back into their full selves; you'll be stuck with them. Mac OS Standard formatting has the same problem.

There is one kind of storage medium I sometimes deliberately keep as PC format, and that's a USB flash stick. While I wouldn't recommend using a PC-format USB flash drive for saving FCP files, I would use a PC-formatted one to move platform-neutral files like JPGs, .docs and so on. Having a PC-formatted USB flash drive can come in handy if you need to interact with PCs, since Macs can read PC-format USB drives, but PCs mostly can't deal with Mac-formatted drives.


www.derekmok.com

Quote

It is a G4, silverplated. Unfortunately, I got a prehistoric version of FCP 3.0 with it which I still use.

Outdated Mac User is right I believe that's a Sawtooth Mirror door G4. I'm not even sure if there is a FW800 port on there. Your best bet is either a G-RAID2 or a CalDigit Firewire VR. Both have FW400 & FW800 ports on the back.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

A journaled drive also does a check every now and again in order to be able to help with data recovery in case of a major crash. This can give you dropped frames, although we don't seem to see it reported much as a significant cause. In any case, I always format my OS drive as journaled, and any media drives as non-journaled.

Just for clarification - journaling is a way for UNIX to "recover" from a crash, more quickly. Since when the boot drive is active and if the operating systems sees a problem, UNIX will try to recover and possibly reboot itself using the journal files to speed up reboot time.

So, Do not journal any other drive except the boot drive of a UNIX operating system

i just bought that iomega ultramax quad interface drive that the original poster asked about - had a last minute transfer need and didnt have time to mail order the usual, OWC, ProMax options.

came formatted mac os extended, which was a pleasant surprise. and it wasnt preloaded with all that usual useless promo crap. these are both good signs in my experience ; )

i'll post back tomorrow after ive had a chance to work from it.

I was handed 3, 1tb iOmega drives, all about 3/4 full for my current project I am editing. They make noises that scare me. I can hear the fans revving up and down at times when there should be no noise.

They spin down too often. I will be watching a sequence, and if I am not on a drive constantly, it will give me a dropped frame warning - but it is only cause the drive is sleeping. Very frustrating.

Also, if my computer goes to sleep, or if I walk away for a long render, the drives not used will go to sleep, and unmount. As you can guess this causes havoc on FCP.

Take my advice, buy anything else. There constant laziness and tendency to go to sleep is causing my workflow to slow greatly.

ive been using that iomega ultramax quad interface 500 gig drive for a few weeks now and its running like a champ with no hiccups at all.

FWIW...I have no experience with this drive but I was curious and after doing a little snoopin' around I found some reviews on Apple.com. There are some good reviews / happy customers, but there are way too many similar negative reviews (trouble mounting / very noisy / lousy impersonal Tech Support - charging $$$ for help / power supply dying shortly out of the box / only 1 year warranty / smoking & burning smell after long usage / cheap casing ).

1 year warranty for a HD? That's ridiculous. Any external should have a 3 year warranty at the very least. It's like they know it will fail sooner than later. I wouldn't buy one from what I found out.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Grass Valley/Thompson uses them as part of the Infinity cam system so that says something. Iomega has a bit of marketing to do with Mac users though. Many of us were not to happy with their old Jaz drives and we still got it in our heads that they don't make drives for video editors, only for back ups. Thats not true, but they need to get off their butts and start sending us the message.

Michael Horton
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