Setting up new ext. hard drive

Lisa and Lisa's Father,

Interesting. You have the exact same Iomega drive. I bought mine last November after reading a glowing review of it in an online MacWorld article about peripheral HDs.

I too view this sort of power management in the Iomega drive as a deficiency. I communicated with the author of the MacWorld review after taking possession of my drive and he was noncommittal about whether he was aware of it and whether he viewed it as a problem.

As I said earlier, I have had extensive communications both online and by phone with Iomega tech support and customer service. They claim to have gotten written confirmation from their engineers that the way the Iomega power management works if a feature, not a bug. Their justification is that it prevents you from accidentally hitting an on/off switch and cutting power to the drive while it is still mounted on the desktop, resulting in possible data loss. My comeback to this was that they should come out to my house and solder both the FW cable to the drive and the Mac, and the power plug to the wall outlet to prevent my accidentally pulling them out while my drive is mounted. They didn't see the humor in this.

I became so disenchanted with the power management on this drive that I would have returned my drive for a refund, but the place I bought it from had a no refund policy on drives.

I have come to terms with the Iomega and have found it to actually perform nicely. I just do an incremental backup of my clone once per week and I dismount it, unplug the FW and power it off between backups. I also do not like the wear and tear it puts on the iMacs FW socket. I have wondered about whether an inline switch could be place on the FW cable but have not found one (I've not done a very thorough search, however).

I really don't know how the power switch works on other similar HDs out there, do you?

Oh, and speaking of the FW 400 cable, I also had to go out and buy one. I was a bit perturbed that Iomega chose to include a USB cable and a FW 800 cable, but not a FW 400 one. I complained about that too, and it fell upon deaf ears.

I suppose we could just leave the drive powered up all the time and just dismount it from the desktop when not actually in use. Sounds like that is what the Shirt Pocket Support person is suggesting. I may try that.

The one bright side (maybe) of disconnecting the FW cable when not in use is that occasionally users report FW problems after performing a Mac OS software update/upgrade while a peripheral device is connected.

I hope I have been able to offer some helpful insight into this small but aggravating problem with the otherwise well performing Iomega HD.

Regards,
Steve M.

I have the 250 gig Black Triple and find it to be an outstanding drive--it's fast, quiet and very robust. I have it on a power strip with some other peripherals that I shut down at night. I usually try to remember to eject the drive before I do, but I often forget. Unlike with some other drives I've owned, this hasn't caused any problems at all. Until I saw this thread, I had forgotten the drive has a power switch.

I guess I don't see what the big deal is about the way the power switch works.

Lisa,

Thanks for keeping me posted. It certainly does sound like a lot of users keep their peripheral drives connected and on all the time. If the drive stays cool I would take that as a good sign. It sounds like auto backup worked as it shoud.

Just be sure, as we already discussed, to always unmount the drive prior to disconnecting the FW cable or pulling the AC plug (or turning off the power strip).

I still think it is a deficiency that Iomega offers no way to power off the HD while the FW cable is connected.

I'd like to know how LaCie, Maxtor, etc. handle the power switch issue.

Regards,
Steve M.