Iomega rolls out OS X-ready UltraMax 640GB RAID drive

Iomega must really like making hard drives aimed at Apple users, or either its MiniMax for the Mac mini and the new UltraMax 640GB drive are completely coincidental. Whatever the case, this new 640GB HDD rocks dual 320GB SATA drives in a RAID 0 or 1 array, and sports an enclosure that any Mac Pro (or PowerMac G5) owner can appreciate. It comes formatted for OS X use (HFS+), but can be reformatted for PC use, and Iomega apparently made cross-platform setup a breeze with the included "FAT32 format tools." (What, no NTFS?) What differentiates this cheese grater drive from those lookalikes is its on-the-fly ability to turn RAID on and off, as well as offering a few more nifty options not typically found on external drives. Aside from the trifecta of USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800 connections, you get a manual RAID switch that allows you to turn off the RAID and use the drives as JBOD (i.e. where each HDD is treated with its own drive letter). If you've been hunting for flexible external storage options, and you're a huge fan of brushed metal, the UltraMax 640GB can get paired up with your Mac (or PC) for $449.95 later this month.

[RikF @ Sep 7th 2006 11:22PM]

The 'cross-platform' tools format to FAT32 and not NTFS because only Windows can write to NTFS drives (others can read them, but not write)

[wsjchoi @ Sep 8th 2006 12:11AM]

just wondering, how much does it cost me to buy a desktop with around... 1 terabyte of storage?

[matchmaking service @ Sep 8th 2006 12:45AM]

Not sure about the price choi, but I remember LaCie came out with a terabyte external drive a year or so ago. So maybe they are cheaper now.

The 1 TB external drive was $1,200 back then. So maybe just six or seven hundred now.

As for this nice 640GB, I think I might switch to a Mac now. Microsoft had me holding on for Vista, but if Vista never comes out.... I'm tired of MS-BS.

[Scooter @ Sep 8th 2006 12:53AM]

Windows can't write to external drives formatted as NTFS. Internal drives can be FAT32 or NTFS (etc.).

[Dumb Scooter @ Sep 8th 2006 1:18AM]

So Windows can't write to NTFS External Drives. Are you sure Einstein? Get back on your mac.

[Jeff Foster @ Sep 8th 2006 1:29AM]

hahaha "each HDD is treated with its own drive letter"

Drive letters. how quaint.

[ScottytheMenace @ Sep 8th 2006 1:44AM]

640GB for $450 is a scant .70 per GB. That is a tremendous price!

And I like that you can make it one or two drives manually. One for backup and one for digital media would rock.

This might just fit my music collection...

[incorrect description @ Sep 8th 2006 1:47AM]

JBOD is when the drives are concatenated to appear to be a single drive. So if you went from RAID to JBOD, the drives would still share a single drive letter, just there would be no more redundancy and no striping at all.

With JBOD, if you have two drives, one of M sectors and one of N, then they appear as a single drive where sectors 0 though (M-1) are on one drive and M through (M+N-1) are on the other.

[Intrepid @ Sep 8th 2006 9:05AM]

"Windows can't write to external drives formatted as NTFS. Internal drives can be FAT32 or NTFS (etc.)."

I am with 'Dumb Scooter'. Think again buddy... and get out of our PC world.

[James Grinter @ Sep 8th 2006 9:38AM]

Its a bizarrely spec'd device - it doesn't actually offer any redundancy, just three options: individual drives ("non-RAID"), concatenated (what Iomega call "spanned volume (JBOD)"), or striped ("RAID-0", really not _R_AID at all). There's no mirroring available in the box.

But, if you think of it as a nice firewire and USB disk enclosure with robust looking fan (too many don't have this), then I suppose it's not a bad product. Just divide the capacity by two if you want to mirror it yourself.

[legodude @ Sep 8th 2006 9:52AM]

I just wanted to clarify here... despite whatever Iomega says, JBOD means that each disk in the chassis shows up independantly to the controller. No striping, mirroring, spanning, etc. Mirroring, striping, etc, all are some sort of RAID. Spanning is not part of the RAID spec AFAIK, but I am somewhat perplexed as to why someone would use it when it seems to have all of the disadvantages of striping, but none of the benefits. So poster "incorrect description" (what a surprise), is incorrect. James is also a bit incorrect, RAID 0 is still RAID.

[Chris @ Sep 8th 2006 10:48AM]

Hmmm... one good thing this could be used for in Windoze is a backup drive.... of course, FAT32 wouldn't support a "*.bkf" file greater than 4GB. But it seems to me that arguing the NTFS part is moot: as the article says:

"PC users can reformat the Iomega UltraMax Drive to NTFS for use with Windows, or can set up cross-platform use with an included FAT32 format tool."

[Jim @ Sep 8th 2006 11:34AM]

Can anyone say "click of death"? There's NO WAY I'm even going to consider trusting this device.

[Donnie @ Sep 8th 2006 12:10PM]

Is this thing a new, more absorbent tampon or something? What gives with the name?

[Nick @ Sep 8th 2006 2:15PM]

The last thing I would need if I had just dropped 3K on a box with four drive bays in it is another box with two drive bays in it, which looked like the first box, except cheap, was littler, but still not portable, and was branded such that I would constantly be reminded of violently-kerchunking Zip Disks with irreplaceable data on them. I guess it has hardware RAID, but only RAIDs 0 and 1? Wtf? RAID 5 is the only way to fly, or stripe and mirror data on-the-fly, as it were.

[Neo @ Sep 8th 2006 4:28PM]

This would work so well with 10.5s' Timemachine functions...looks good heh

[David @ Sep 8th 2006 4:47PM]

Quote:
"Spanning is not part of the RAID spec AFAIK, but I am somewhat perplexed as to why someone would use it when it seems to have all of the disadvantages of striping, but none of the benefits."

It allows you to use all of your drive's space if you have two drives of two different sizes, since striping will cut off the excess of the bigger of two drives to match the smaller one.

[my moustache @ Sep 9th 2006 6:15AM]

legodude, incorrect description,

erm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBOD#Concatenation_.28JBOD.29

not that i didn't want you two duke it out.

[Jeff Lewis @ Sep 9th 2006 7:51PM]

And because no one's said this yet - good lord - this is one butt ugly thing. It looks like it was lashed up with left over bits of hardware. I think most PC users would find it unattractive - and they want to sell it to fashion conscious Mac owners?

Ick.

[David @ Sep 13th 2006 5:55PM]

"Wtf? RAID 5 is the only way to fly, or stripe and mirror data on-the-fly, as it were."

Yes, because RAID5 works so well with only two drives.