Iomega eGo 250 GB USB 2.0 Rugged Portable Hard Drive 34265 (Ruby Red)

i bought this on January and i dont even use it that much, just to move files from office to home..like twice a month? anyways, to transfer data is very slow (and gets slower every time!) and now that i just did a back up to restore my PC, after ive done the restore and want it to copy back the back up i did to my Iomega 250GB, i couldnt!! all my files are gone!!!!
in few words..my back up tool didnt back up!

I had it for 3 months and it is dead. The light comes on and I hear the disk, but computers can no longer see the drive.

I dropped it from 3 feet on my wood floor. It was idle when it dropped, but apparently that does not matter.

Do not believe the term "rugged." It was not a bad drop at all, yet it killed the drive.

Oh well.

I got a laptop a while back. I had a desk top. My desk top crashed. Had no money to get top of the line new desktop. Have been using my laptop as the main at-home computer for four years one. Its hard drive ran out of space, only 40 gigs. I thought that it was going to be expensive, but this portablke hard drive was cheap! I put off installing it for two weeks, thinking that it was going to be hard, it installed it in under five minutes. Moved all the agmes and photos onto it in another 2 minutes. Amazing!

I also got a hard case to protect it if I ever move. Best buy I made in a long time!

I prefer reviews of products only after actual use for months/years. I would be hesitant to purchase storage with only 1-year warranty but some research shows the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 mobile HDD inside carries a 3-year warranty. The eGo performed flawlessly for more than a year. Effortless plug and play, really no installation required under Windows, small and tidy with solid feel. I guess it lived up to its warranty rating but I expect more considering ours was not used heavily. Our particular experience appears to be in the minority given overwhelmingly positive reviews here.

We began to randomly receive System Tray notification, "This USB device can perform faster if you connect it to a Hi-speed USB 2.0 port." When plugging into the same rear or side port(s) we'd been using, 1-hour backups would instead take many hours. USB benchmark tools showed sustained transfer rates would drop from typical 25-30 MBps to only 1 MBps, lower than even USB 1.1 performance. Recently, this occasional annoyance became permanent. At first we wanted to blame the computer's mainboard, corrupted Windows USB drivers, or Iomega's supplied 'Supplemental Power' cable but from experience I knew better. Tests with other storage devices using the same cable and ports proved USB 2.0 performance was fine, as I suspected.

Since the warranty had expired, which one can confirm by entering S/N into an Iomega support page, I removed the 2.5" notebook drive inside (requires size T6 Torx screwdriver). Installed inside a far less sturdy Apricorn enclosure we purchased in a pinch, it now performs at USB 2.0 speeds of 28-32 MBps using the same Iomega cable. Considering the low use our eGo received (about 65 weekly data backups) sitting virtually undisturbed on tower case, it is disappointing that failure of simple USB-to-IDE converter circuitry inside rendered it inoperative.

The backup software (license for Retrospect 7.5 Express version) available for download leaves something to be desired but a decent value considering the price point. In our case, we already had our own backup software.

For those petty complaints about the 'large' size of the eGo, it is by no means large. It DOES easily fit in a typical dress shirt or coat breast pocket, though I don't know anyone who would be comfortable carrying the weight of any notebook drive and good aluminum case there long. This isn't an MP3 player, folks. It may comfort one to know the slightly oversized, flask-like case is due mostly to the very 'Drop-Guard' technology that is a selling point of these products. The internal drive is wrapped in a plastic band padded at edges and corners by about 1/8" shock-absorbing viscoelastic foam I find comparable to Sorbothane orthopedics. I guess this accounts for it's low noise and 51-inch drop rating.

We never had to test it's ruggedness but I will say that I haven't seen 'rugged' used in the actual product name anywhere but at Amazon recently. When we purchased Feb. 2008, Amazon simply called it 'Iomega eGo Portable'. Ours is 160GB, Cherry Red, Model: RPHD-U, Part No: 31686100.

I buy a multitude of these at my workplace and give them out almost like flash drives or floppy drives back in the day. This one is well built, is well received, has a decent price point and performs acceptably.