70GB Rev Drive

PC World (US online)

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The handiest and most affordable desktop backup device is currently an external hard drive. But to back up critical workstations and servers, you need high-capacity removable media that you can rotate and secure off-site. Iomega's next-generation Rev Drive fills that need.

Pros

  • Sturdy and reliable hard drives, 70GB cartridge included, significantly faster than tape.

Cons

  • Slower than the average USB 2.0 hard drives we've tested.

Bottom Line

Backups are essential to the business world and the Iomega Rev drive's strong performance boosts its appeal as a safe alternative to tape. The 70GB (uncompressed) removable drive is a transportable and easy-to-use solution that offers a quick and safe storage option for important data.

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  • Price

    $ 899.00 (AUD)

Special Offers

We tested a shipping USB 2.0 $899 Rev 70GB Backup Drive (internal IDE and SATA versions are available as well) that successfully challenges the supremacy of old-fashioned tape drives and media (like DAT 72) still popular in the business backup market. The new Rev can handle 70GB of uncompressed data, almost twice as much content as its predecessor could. Better still, it retains read/write compatibility with the older 35GB cartridges. Backups can also be made using compression, allowing up to 140GB worth of data to be stored.

The Rev's cartridges use technology based on sturdy, reliable 2.5in hard drives, with the platter and motor in the cartridge and the head and electronics in the drive. One 70GB cartridge comes with the drive; subsequent 70GB cartridges cost $79. The drive also includes EMC's backup software, Retrospect Express.

In our tests, the Rev wrote 3.06GB of files and folders (a good indicator of backup performance) in 203 seconds. That's slower than the average of 152 seconds for external desktop USB 2.0 drives we've tested that don't use RAID to span multiple disks, but it's significantly faster than tape.

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