Iomega Ships REV 35GB/90GB Drives

Iomega is shipping their new robust, removable hard drive solution: the REV drive. The removable drives hold 35GB, while the 90GB is the (presumably optimistic) estimate of how much data they can hold if you use compression. The hardened removable drives are smaller than a pack of cards and offer (of course) hard drive backup speeds, which Iomega claims are eight times faster than tape.

The REV drive itself (which the removable hard drive cartridges plug into) is available as both an external USB 2.0 device, and as an internal ATAPI device. The drives come with backup software: Iomega's Automatic Backup Pro as well as Symantec's Norton Ghost for image backups.

As of October, 2004, the REV drives (USB or internal) were running about $330 on www.buy.com, while the 35GB disks cost about $54. Clearly this is quite a bit more than the per-GB cost of just buying a hard disk, so the question is whether the convenient form factor, hardening against potential damage, and included software will make up for the cost.

For people building turnkey systems who can pass the cost along to the customer, the REV drive may turn out to be an attractive option. It remains to be seen whether it can achieve the end-user penetration that the venerable ZIP drive did.

You can read Iomega's press release on the new drive online at their website.

July 20, 2004July