I was wary of buying an Iomega product after hearing stories of total drive failures from friends, but I took the plunge anyway. I needed an external drive and this was cheap, sturdy and apparently reliable (after research online told me so).

To be honest, it looks pretty brick-like. It is heavy, black and chunky. Not the nicest thing to place on your desk next to a suave, sleek MacBook (even if mine is black, too). Anyway, I know that looks aren't everything (why do you think I have no profile picture?) so I have hidden it behind some books.

As to set up, it is ready to go out of the box with a Windows PC using NTFS, but it needs to be formatted on a Mac. The method is simple (even easier if you are going to use Time Machine, as it does this for you the first time you use it). So, with either OS (sorry, I don't use any other operating systems) setup is a cakewalk.

Operation is fast, quiet and, again, simple. It's just a hard drive, after all. 7200rpm is almost silent. It is not powered by the USB 2.0, but by a power cable to a normal plug socket. I don't know if that is standard.

I think it is well worth the money: £64.00 for one terabyte of memory. So far I have had no trouble with it at all. (although I still back-up my really precious files to dvd, just in case)