iomega

This Iomega HDD 250gb drive is a nice little drive that has both FireWire and USB connectors, and is sold at a good price. It works fine, and I'm sure these minimal design goals were chosen so as to look good in magazine checkbox chart reviews, and upon cursory examination of the box by shoppers in stores.

But here's something the box and reviews don't say: This unit has NO POWER SWITCH but it does have a NOISY FAN. Take your choice: a constant whirring din, or physically pulling the plug when you don't want to use the drive and plugging it back in when you do want it.

NO POWER SWITCH??!?!? What was Iomega THINKING?

Pros:
* Setup was extremely easy: plug it in, wait a minute, start using it. No software needed to be installed, no Windows disks were required.
* Both firewire and USB work great, no problems on XP nor Windows 2000.
* Drive is reasonably fast

Cons:
* Drive is a little noisy -- not read/write sounds, but the hard disk spinning or maybe an internal fan.
* Power connector could be better. It's not especially easy to plug in, and the connection isn't very firm (feels like it would fall out easily).