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- manufacturer #: 33014
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Product Reviews
Iomega REV Internal ATAPI drive
os:
Not ApplicableSupplied with 80-wire IDE cable, 3.3" - 5.25" bay-adaptor, 1 REV disk, and bundled Iomega backup software.
I tested the drive both with and without compression enabled and was unsurprised to find I only managed to fit around 33GB on each disk. Most of my files are either already compressed, or files that generally don't compress well. You may well achieve compression ratios close to those projected if your files compress well, but don't bank on squeezing 90GB of data on a disk.
Most tape devices use hardware compression implemented by the tape drive (quicker and not impacted by the PC's CPU speed). Disk-based devices (including the REV drive) don't use hardware compression, so it's down to software implemented compression, and that's CPU intensive. Expect to see your backup throughput decrease, backup times increase, and CPU utilisation to go up if you enable compression within your backup programme. For example, mine is installed on an older ASUS TUSL2 based system fitted with a 900MHz Celeron and running W2K Pro. Backup throughput halved with software compression enabled. This system lives in a cupboard and is used solely as a file-server, so that's not an issue. I'm happy to fit approximately 35GB on a disk, so don't enable compression as a general rule. Average throughput (uncompressed) reported by "Retrospect" was 750MB/Min.
The REV drive appears as a "removable drive" so may also be used as a very fast removable disk to simply copy files to and from if you don't wish to use backup software.
The REV disks aren't exactly cheap, but compare very favourably to similar capacity tape-based media. The main unit is very competitively priced when compared to an equivalent AIT drive. It includes a single REV disk to get you started, so you're ready to go as soon as you have fitted it. eBuyer are the most competitively priced supplier for this item and disks.
Unreservedly recommended. Five stars.
System State
Regarding the other commenter, if you download the very latest version of the Iomega Software, you can now backup the System State.
However, as mentioned, MS Backup within Windows is a better tool than Iomegas own software...
good backup device
os:
Windows XPOverall this is good and easy to use backup device. Installing it was no problem and copying data to/from it is as easy as copying to another hard disk. It is far easier and nicer to use than a tape drive.
However, I couldn’t boot from a CD once this was installed. This is because the BIOS seems it as a CD ROM drive (so does windows but in windows you can write to it) and on the Dell Servers you can tell it to boot from CD but you can't say which CD ROM to use if you have more than one. It therefore kept trying to boot from this Rev Drive instead of the Real CD ROM which is what you want it to use if you want to use Ghost that comes with it to take an image of your hard drive. I therefore had to boot from a floppy to use Ghost. This might also prove an inconvenience in future if i need to boot from a CD.
Also Iomega's backup software with this is a waste or time. Depending on what you need to backup though, this will backup files very happily on a schedule or when the files change but if the path to the file together with the files name is more than 260 chars then it wont backup it up and will give a files error. This is a big pain if you have just a few folders inside other folders. (I found this eventually on Iomega’s web site).
You also can’t backup the system state, exchange, etc with this so i recommend that you use another piece of software with this device. I use Windows backup which is free and far better than Iomega's.
Backup tool
os:
Windows XPThis is an excellent piece of kit, its good value but has rubbish software, i usually buy backup assist software to go with it as well which is pricey but is also excellent 4 stars cos the bundled software is rubbish
