Iomega revs Rev to 120GB

If you just thought to yourself Holy crap Iomega is still around? And they still make the Rev drive? Wasn't that introduced almost four years ago?, well, you aren't alone. Apparently the company is introducing a new backwards compatible version of the drive in 120GB capacity, which is sure to be ignored just as roundly as every other non-optical product the company's made since people's Zip and Jaz drives started going click in the 90s.

[Neoprimal @ Mar 4th 2008 3:06AM]

From Zip to well, zilch. Iomega was in a position to dominate the market with their products but chose to keep them proprietary and locked down. Now they're grasping at straws. Sad..sad.

[yoshi @ Mar 4th 2008 5:38AM]

The fact that their first product ate everyone's data didn't do much for their image either. I'm surprised they're still trying to use the Iomega name at all.

[Craig @ Mar 4th 2008 6:47AM]

'Zactly. I hate hate hate Iomega for (a) letting me down with crappy junk (yes, I was a Zip drive early adopter), and (b) for squandering what should have been an industry-leading position (think SanDisk x 3). But noooo...they had to design the world's LEAST-reliable storage devices. Then touting them as ideal backup solutions was really the urine-flavored icing on the cake of irony.

[bugmat @ Mar 4th 2008 9:24AM]

Who DIDN'T have a zip drive? Back in those days flash drives were a dream! I had my 100 MB disks and of course all went click-clack after a few months - this is one company that did themselves in and you can't be too sorry for them!

[bugmat @ Mar 4th 2008 9:29AM]

Correction: "are doing themselves in" obviously they're still around. That said I have to admit the disks were useful at the time (circa 1999-2001) but rally I doubt well see a renaissance!

[Totalfixation @ Mar 4th 2008 3:10AM]

to make this a success they need to price the cartridges at around 10-20 dollars.

[Spyvie @ Mar 4th 2008 3:42AM]

To make this a success they need to market it 10 years ago

[Craig @ Mar 4th 2008 6:49AM]

^^^^ Maybe they should sell it through the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

[WL @ Mar 5th 2008 8:53AM]

I agree, price was always an issue with Iomega, and there products are still over priced even though just about no one uses them.
To compete with flash drives and external hard drives they would have to be about that price. I could see myself going for one of these if 120gb disk where that cheap but I somehow doubt they will be.

[vrf @ Mar 4th 2008 3:12AM]

Okay, pardon my ignorance, but if one actually did need to backup 100+ gigs of hard-drive, what other options are out there?

[Ryan Block @ Mar 4th 2008 3:30AM]

Most reasonable people would spend $150 and get a 300-500GB drive. Cartridge disk / drive hybrids just can't keep up with the falling prices of proper hard drive space.

[Michael LaFramboise @ Mar 4th 2008 3:34AM]

Just to add to what Ryan said...

For 154 you can already get a 750GB WD hd

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136131

[Neoprimal @ Mar 4th 2008 4:32AM]

The disks are $70 for 70gb disks and $60 for 35gb disks (what!?) so I can only imagine the price of the $120 gb disks. You're def. paying for portability I guess....since you can get a 160gb hard drive for about $45. Even for enterprises that may want a medium to hold on to data, this seems like a stretch.
It's ludicrous by any frame of reason. But hey, people buy $600 cell phones so who knows?

[Sir Fatty @ Mar 4th 2008 8:29AM]

Hard drives are NOT proper backup media. Files can be over written, there is no version history, and it is not redundant enough.

[Patuxentbball @ Mar 4th 2008 10:14AM]

@Sir Fatty
Being the proud (former) owner of a few Iomega cartridges. And assuming your comparing the "not proper backup media" hard drives to zip disks or something similar, you realize that these types of disks/catridges "can be over written, there is no version history, and it is not redundant enough." ie. they are rewritable(and in the same session, unlike cdrws), and they fail very very clickity clickity fast. Pray tell, what IS proper backup media. Magnetic tape?

[Evan @ Mar 4th 2008 1:57PM]

Considering that Costco sells 1TB USB drives with "one-button backup", I think it's clear that hard drives have become the backup choice for home users. And businesses can continue to use tape for their backup needs.

[andyo @ Mar 4th 2008 3:16AM]

If prices are right (no more than $20 per cartridge) and the specs are up to it (not hard) this could be good for backing up high-def movies in an HTPC, at least until bluray burning becomes mainstream.

[Steveorevo @ Mar 4th 2008 3:26AM]

Sweetness, this is the ultimate. Just by drives of any size or configuration... just be sure to pick up a stack of ziplock anti-static bags at Frys and you're set!

http://www.geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=691

[andyo @ Mar 4th 2008 5:26AM]

Oops wait a minute! I was thinking of your typical HD-DVD movies (20-25 GB). With bluray, you could only fit 2 or 3 movies in a cartridge, so they would have to be cheaper than $20 for that!

[Broo @ Mar 4th 2008 9:42AM]

Steveorevo;

They have a very similar device at Fry's for $40; but it is lacking the firewire ports- just USB and eSATA...

[Charles Han @ Mar 4th 2008 3:22AM]

yea price is key, but u can always get urself a nice big ole laptop hd and enclosure, if you need portable space. That is what i do neway, if i need to back up a lot of data and carry it around, and every computer has usb ports. Seems like a big hassle to buy a new drive and the disks and find urself unable to use it because the place your going doesn't have the drive or you have to bring the drive with you which beats portability. So to sum it up EPIC FAIL!!!!!!!!!

[~~Tito~~ @ Mar 4th 2008 3:31AM]

I remember those. Isn't it like a roll of tape in there? Like a cassette? The should really update the shell of the exterior, so 90's! lol

[Shadowise @ Mar 4th 2008 3:44AM]

Well, the 35GB disks were something like $60 (dunno how much they are now), so I doubt this will be anywhere near the price point people are hoping for.

[aahatimy @ Mar 4th 2008 3:51AM]

I have an Iomega 320gb hdd.

[bdkennedy1 @ Mar 4th 2008 3:58AM]

CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!

[LondonConsultant @ Mar 4th 2008 4:18AM]

That's look nice next to my Commodore 64

[Flunky Carter @ Mar 4th 2008 4:16AM]

CLICK OF DEATH. It ate through several of my disks. OOOOOhhh.. I remember having the Iomega Zip 250USB that attached via PCMCIA... that was hot rocks. I even considered removing my Floppy drive on my old Inspiron 8200 and replacing it with the ZIP Drive. Back in late 90's, I remember drooling over the Jaz 1GB discs, but the $100+ price tag kept that dream in the pipes.

[icebox @ Mar 4th 2008 5:02AM]

holly crap ...

this things are still around?

well the bigger the cartridge the more data you can store. The more data you store the funnyer it is when it goes click click click ...

[Bad Beaver @ Mar 4th 2008 5:04AM]

I remember how my entire OS 8.x system would fit on a 100MB ZiP with ease. External drive via SCSI that was, because the module-bay version for the Powerbook was way, way too expensive.

[aMac @ Mar 4th 2008 5:10AM]

The Zip disk was the shiznit before writable CD-Rs became cheap enough to not matter. They were the only reasonable way to transport big files for print and every production house accepted them.

They served their purpose and I appreciate what Iomega did for me in the past, but really guys, it's time to move on!

[matt byrne @ Mar 4th 2008 5:59AM]

I love how they've made an internal drive. How very 90s indeed.

[tekdroid @ Mar 4th 2008 6:57AM]

I wish there were more competition in this arena.

Specifically, with removable opticals. With HD-DVD 'dead', I wish a data-only version of it would come out, without DRM and without the ability to play HD-DVD movies.

REV works much like a HD, with all the disadvantages and advantages that go with that. Probably less reliable since the cartridges are removable (just a guess).

[XDS @ Mar 4th 2008 7:28AM]

amen! , The gov't needs to "?de?" "?re?"- regulate the non spindle tape patent , or something drastic needs to happen soon in this area.

People just don't f*cking get it.

[tizo @ Mar 4th 2008 7:46AM]

SYQUEST RULES!

[Nakey @ Mar 4th 2008 8:56AM]

iczer2, that's exactly why we sell them

great for backing up using backup software.

[iczer2 @ Mar 4th 2008 8:43AM]

On their own, yes that's true, they're just another disk drive. But, with the backup software (like for instance, BackupExec, NetBackup, or ArcServer to name some of the more powerful ones) they can treat an HD more along the lines of a tape media (but with all the benefits of the hard drive) and ensure that there is a version history as well as the ability to do real honest to goodness Full, Incremental and Differential backups.

As far as redundancy goes, you could always use a RAID array or for the ultimate in el cheapo backup have three HD's connected via a Firewire 800, or other Hot pluggable SATA dock, and rotate them out every week like you would tapes. Presto, now you're got at least several months of backups just like our Grandfathers, Fathers and Sons had.... Yeah, I know, it was a terrible joke, but I gotta use 'em somewhere.

[Nakey @ Mar 4th 2008 8:54AM]

Firstly, this ISNT the Zip drive. So don't think that it has the same problems as the Zip drive. Yes, i know the feeling of lost data on a ZIP drive. This, quite frankly, is a stackload more reliable than, really, anything else out of the Iomega stable.

We use them. we sell them. All our customers within the last 2 years or so have REV drives. We've had more reliability on the Rev drives and the Media than we've had with the servers. People are using them instead of Travan and DDS tape drives.

Unlike zip and Jaz, they're not aimed at consumer users. If i had to buy one for my own personal use, the only place locally that has both the drive and the media is a major IT wholesaler. no one else. They're not aimed at big business either as backup capacity is too small

However, for small business (who'd have a 7GB SQL database + emails + user folders on 2003SBS), it's a great idea. More reliable than tape and optical media, but just as easy to use. Not as much of a Pain in the butt as backing up nightly to different external hard drives (all that plugging in and stuff), but just as fast.

BTW, our year old, used 5 times a day to test new REV drives in new servers, 35GB REV disc is still going strong, with no clicks.

[MosquitoControl @ Mar 4th 2008 9:08AM]

You know, I was about to reply to the Maxell post by saying that I spent a summer working there, which was great because I could buy Zip disks for $5 apiece; a 50% employee discount. But I erased it, figuring the post was pointless.

Then I scroll down and see some Iomega news. Creepy.

[batfastad @ Mar 4th 2008 9:15AM]

For a small business looking to make offsite backups of 20-120GB of data, these can make sense.

It's not always practical to carry around a whole external HDD. At the moment we use a bunch of 120GB Lacie rugged drives for our mailstore and database backups. Pretty hefty things though.

I'd feel a bit more confident with one of these cartridges in my bag, than a full-on HDD.

If these 120GB cartridges were priced at about $40 / £20-30 then I'd be tempted... for archiving my own video files and music.

Your other offsite backup options are:
- Burning 120GB to a bunch of BluRay discs would take a bit of time. BD-RE discs are still pretty expensive. It's not as easy to script the burning of a optical disc, than it is to use xcopy to transfer between 2 drives. Our 80GB email message store would take 4 single-layer BluRay discs, great so I've got to go and change discs every 40 minutes.

- SSDs in eSATA/USB caddy. Going to be pretty expensive for a while. Current SSDs seem to be slower than conventional HDDs at transferring large files (>8GB) as well. Not ideal if you've got an 80GB file to transfer. I guess you could split the file into chunks though.

- Tape? Let's be honest, the Rev's a fair bit better than tape!

As a publishing house we used to get sent thousands of zip disks every year, and we never had problems. Apart from on Macs with some fussy SCSI stuff, where we would just copy the image off onto a PC and convert it. But I heard loads of people having problems with Zip discs.

I do worry about Iomegas reputation for reliability though.

For the time being I'll stick with our Lacie rugged drives though!

[H4MM3R @ Mar 4th 2008 9:48AM]

WHY?

[kal326 @ Mar 4th 2008 10:14AM]

Iomega zip, please. I'm sticking with 9 track...

[frankXchange @ Mar 4th 2008 10:30AM]

Holy crap Iomega is still around? LOL - that's EXACTLY what I thought.

I used to use IOmega's competitor Syquest; MUCH faster and very reliable. I don't recall having any cartridge failures. I don't know what happened to them. I was forced to use Iomega products by our IT department. I couldn't believe how slow they were, and the awful fail rate (up to 25% in a single year).

I moved over to DL tape, but I found that fail rate unacceptably high as well, and move on to LaCie external HD's. Now I just use a combination of DVD burner and cheap bulk usb2 drives for back-up. I'd have another look at the cartridge model, but the cartridge prices and reliability would have to be excellent.

[Iridium @ Mar 4th 2008 11:20AM]

Man, if you were a designer in the 90's you had to have a zip drive. There was nothing worse than bringing a presentation somewhere and having the disc fail. I still have my portfolio on a zip disc somewhere.

I remember that I bought a scsui card just for a zip drive so I could take my drive with me to transfer back and forth from mac to PC. I never trusted the drives in the computer clusters, disc eaters.

[John Laur @ Mar 5th 2008 12:15AM]

I really like reading the comments from all the people that believe iomega lived and died with the zip drive. While the zip was certainly the most popular product out of their doors, fifteen years of other bizarre storage products preceded it -- the humongous bernoulli drives; the floptical, lasersafe -- and a few since then too -- jaz, clik, rev. Whether or not you care one bit about their products you have to admit that they have stuck to their guns trying to find the next big thing in storage. We'd be lucky to have more technology companies with their philosophy.

[King.Tito @ Apr 1st 2008 2:38AM]

True Story: I tried to be an iomega customer last week!

Ok, so I was in the market for a backup solution for my company, and despite knowing the lore of the "click of death," and having read enough about people having problems with JAZ disks, the REV still looked like it might be a good solution for my business. I decided to start with a single purchase and see how I liked it, so I went to iomega's website and tried to place an order.

The website rejected my order, claiming that my address was incorrect on my credit card. Ok, I had just moved from NY to WI, so I decided to try a different card (maybe I forgot to update that particular card's address). Again, no dice, the site said the CC company rejected the transaction, due to an address problem. Ok, I'm a little concerned about this, so I call the CC company - not only did every transaction come through, but iomega is now getting ready to send me FIVE drives instead of one. Sigh... so I call them up (iomega) and they say they will correct the CC issues and just send me one drive. I can expect it in a week. Well, a week passes, and no shiny new REV drive on my doorstep. I call IOMEGA and they never processed the order, and didn't ship me a drive. Ok, I ask, can you send me one now? Nope, they tell me they're doing inventory and they won't ship orders for another week. LOL - why the heck would they need to do inventory if they never ship customer orders in the first place?

At any rate, just ordered a Sony AIT tape drive and I think that was the better route to go. I was probably iomega's first, and last, online customer. LOL.