Counting the cost

Obviously Sata-to-USB 3.0 adapters need significant work before SSDs see their full potential unleashed in these external enclosures. They are, however, still a fair bit faster than their platter-spinning brethren.

Performance claims err towards the theoretical and the price seems unrealistic too

Verdict

Certainly, Iomega is putting down a marker to show its presence in this current generation of SSD meets USB 3.0 storage, however, it is significantly more expensive than Kingston’s offering. If you must have black aluminium, by all means buy Iomega’s SSD Flash Drive, but if you’re sensible, you’ll go to Kingston and pay £100 less for the 128GB drive and £220 less for its 256GB variant. ®

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60%

Iomega SSD Flash

Sleek SSD drive with USB 3.0 interfacing.

Price: £183 (64GB), £325 (128GB), £624 (256GB) RRP

More Info: Iomega's SSD Flash drive page

COMMENTS

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All Reader Comments (8)

Highly Rated

Posted Friday 28th January 2011 14:45 GMT

Michael C

Can we get more tests?

Say, same drive on USB2 as well as same contained SSD (what's inside this chassis) connected to eSATA and Firewire 800. Lets also see USB3 compared based on a common USB3 including chipset, a USB3 card in a 1x slot, and a USB3 card in a full performance PCI configuration.

In 90% of cases, USB3 is capped at PCI1x speed anyway, then add in controller, OS, and CPU overhead, and they perform at barely more (if at all) SATA speeds... Why pay so much more for USB 3 (and add yet another port), where eSATA is so close in speed as to be (in the near term) irrelevant, except for people moving TB at a time, which can;t be done with these small drives anyway....

Posted Friday 28th January 2011 13:50 GMT

Anonymous Coward

All very nice

Thanks but I think I'll save the 650 sovs, buy a couple of 1TB traditional USB drives in small form factor and spend the rest on something fun for the the kids, like a new console!

Thanks anyway!

( 650 flipping quid for 256GB! Breathe in, breathe in slowly and calmly! )

Posted Friday 28th January 2011 09:34 GMT

Anonymous Coward

That's 238.4GB

I still blame Iomega for claiming that 1MB=1,000,000 bytes, henceforth making it a de facto standard. Bastards, I'll never forgive them. That and the click of death. And the subsequent denial. And my 250GB drive dying. And my 750MB drive consistently killing my 250MB disks. It took me a while to learn my lesson, but I'll never buy from them again. Especially at this price!