Iomega Professional 2 TB External Drive Review

It works! With eSATA and USB 2.0 ports, this drive connected easily to six different computers ranging from 7 years old to less than a month, and running operating systems from Windows XP up to Windows 7, some 32 bit and some 64 bit. Every computer saw it as an external hard drive and was able to use it.

I have other ways of doing day-to-day backup, but was about to send a computer in to HP for repair and bought this drive (from TigerDirect, $130) to make an image backup first. That went so well that I started on the other computers, backing them up with Microsoft's image writer, Windows Complete PC Backup (WCPCB) where it was available (Win 7 and Vista Ultimate only). I also used Macrium Reflect Free Edition on all six computers, with success on all but one, and tried Paragon Backup & Recovery Free 2010 on that one, with uncertain success.

Hardware & Performance:

• Iomega Professional Hard Drive 2 terabytes (2,000 GB), P/N 31853000, Model LDHD-UPS, eSATA and USB 2.0.
• Capacity as displayed on a Windows Vista system: 1.81 TB, or 2,000,396,288,000 bytes.
• Maximum transfer rates (advertised): eSATA 3,000 megabits/second (Mb/s), USB 2.0 480 Mb/s. Those are peak rates, not achievable in large transfers.
• Actual average data transfer rates for complete image backup: As high as 475 megabits/second (Mb/s) writing through the eSATA port from a new computer, and as low as 93 Mb/s writing through USB 2.0 from a 4-year-old Toshiba laptop running Windows XP (a 7-year-old Gateway laptop with XP did better than that lame Toshiba!).
• In its search for image backup devices, WCPCB did not "find" the drive on a Vista Ultimate system when the drive was connected by USB 2.0, though it was mounted as a "local disk" and files were visible. Therefore, the drive was not usable for WCPCB backup via USB. It did find the drive when connected by eSATA.
• On Windows 7 computers, WCPCB did find the drive when connected either by USB or by eSATA.
• Macrium always found the drive and was able to write to it. Unfortunately, though, I was unable to boot their linux rescue CD on one of the Windows 7 systems. They claim to have a fix if you buy the "full" edition, $40 per computer. I may blog about Macrium Reflect later - I do like their software best, except for this problem.
• The Iomega Professional Hard Drive box indicates compatibility with Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32-bit). Does anyone even make a 32-bit Windows 7 system? I suppose, but anyway the drive seems to work just fine on two different 64-bit Windows 7 HP laptops, using either the eSATA or the USB connection and the drivers already in Windows 7.
• The drive is very quiet, and I'm fussy about noise. It's quiet.
• In Device Manager: The drive is listed as a "Samsung HD204UI USB Device", or just a "Samsung HD204UI" when connected by eSATA.
• According to the box label, the drive was assembled in Korea, Sept 20, 2010. I wonder if the entire system is made for Iomega in Korea by Samsung. That's OK.

Software:

I would expect any external drive to come with software for backing up the computer, both for drive-image backups and for incremental backups. Indeed, the box containing this drive touts their "Iomega NeverDown Software," which, unfortunately, was not in the box and is not to be found anywhere on the Iomega web site. Apparently, it has been discontinued. The box does contain a brief manual, in seven different languages, telling how to get started with NeverDown, but alas, no software (oops). They do offer the downloadable "Iomega Protection Suite," including:

• Iomega's v.Clone, which allows you to run YOUR OWN computer on anyone else's hardware. It's a "virtual image" - is that an image backup? Their own user manual advises that v.Clone is not backup software.
• Roxio Retrospect Express, which appears to protect exactly one computer on one external drive, no more. I'm not interested - my 2TB Iomega drive now has ten compressed system images on it from six fully-competent computers, and is barely half full.
• Hence, Iomega apparently does not offer an image backup solution. Ouch.

Happily, though, many other companies do offer image backup software, some for free, such as Macrium and Paragon.

A caution: I have not yet attempted to restore an image to any computer's hard drive. That's a risk I won't take unless I have to, and the repaired computer came back from HP with the internal drive intact. Where possible I do make at least two different images, one by WCPCB and one by Macrium or Paragon or both, in the hope that one will work if the other fails.

For your consideration: Universal Serial Bus. USB 2.0 followed USB 1.0, and has been around for at least seven years now. USB 3.0 is a recently-approved standard, and manufacturers are working hard to implement it in new computers and drives. It is about 10 times as fast as USB 2.0, a little faster even than eSATA, so computers with USB 3.0 may no longer need an an eSATA port. Therefore, future computers might have to talk to this particular drive using only USB 2.0.

That's not too bad, though - Macrium backed up a complete Windows 7 computer in 32 minutes via eSATA and 59 minutes via USB 2.0. In both cases, 105 GB "used" space on the computer's drive was compressed to one 78 GB file on the Iomega drive. Actual average data transfer rates, therefore, were 349 Mb/s and 189 Mb/s respectively, so the eSATA image backup was not even twice as fast as the USB 2.0 backup even though burst speed is six times higher.

Copyright (c) 2010

Please add your comments or questions.

NVIDIA Driver Update Error 800705B3

This morning Windows Update wanted to install several updates, including one for my GeForce 8600 GT graphics card. I let the updates proceed. All updates installed correctly except this NVIDIA driver. According to Windows Update, the installation failed with error code 800705B3. Microsoft's Windows Update description of the failure is shown at the bottom of this post.

Microsoft has no information about this error, nor does NVIDIA.com. A quick internet search with Google didn't help much either.

My computer runs Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I suppose it's a 64-bit problem - neither Microsoft nor the 3rd party vendors have fully committed to 64 bits yet - it's always the last thing they do when developing software or issuing an update. But I don't know how to fix the update error, 64-bit problem or not.

---

AHA! End run. I went back to NVIDIA.com and downloaded driver version 178.24, the latest drivers for the NVIDIA 8-series running 64 bits. That download was 99 MB, much larger than the Windows Update download for some reason. It installed without error. When Windows Update next runs, we will see whether it wants to try to update the NVIDIA driver again. I expect that it won't.

The NVIDIA.com web site is very easy to navigate, and there is even a tool (beta release) which can figure out which hardware and software you have, hence which driver update you need. I'm impressed so far.

Comments?

Vista Still Sucks

This post is a brief rant about Microsoft and their latest attempt to provide an "operating system" for regular PC users. It's the opinion of one semi-technical user - read it at your own risk.

Vista has been out for over a year and a half now. One major update later (Service pack 1), nothing has changed on my system. Nothing. Every original complaint is still there. I have found workarounds for some, but not all. I don't have the performance problems that so many others complain about for some reason - but then again I have never made the exact comparison by loading XP or Ubuntu on this speedy new home-built hardware. It boots up in seconds. I chose Vista Ultimate 64 because it supports 64-bit addressing, allowing more RAM memory, which (as always) is the future of computing. But that's the best I can say for Vista.

Microsoft has always been a paragon of mediocrity in the technical arena. I have not been exposed to anything that they have done with excellence, ever, except marketing. They have, of course, applied their marketing muscle with skill, arrogance, and disdain to force their inferior products into markets where excellent products already existed, to the detriment of the customer and certainly to the companies offering the superior products. Vista may yet be another Microsoft marketing success but, so far, it's a technical flop.

A few of my specific complaints:

• Vista forgets folder settings. This is a well-documented bug which doesn't seem to appear on all systems, but I sure have it. Just now, for example, I opened my Contacts folder to find that it had been reset to a folder type of "all items," (the default) rather than a folder type of "contacts." Because of this, the contacts were not sorted in any useful way. This happens to all folders, even the recycle bin. I set things back as they should be, but I know that they won't be that way after the next reboot. Here is a web site that offers a fix, but in my experience the fix lasts for only a few days to a few weeks.
• Vista is unstable. Several times now Vista has failed catastrophically, something that never happened on Windows XP. Most recently I had almost finished a fairly complex email, and suddenly the create-mail window froze. I could still perform a few windows functions, but every application which was dependent on explorer.exe was stuck. That's a lot of applications, and apparently the "create mail" function in Windows Mail is one of them. Reason enough to use a different mail client, I guess. I lost my work.
• HELP is AWFUL!!! What on earth are they thinking? If you ask for help from within an application, you will get an unordered list of things that might help. But if you try to change or narrow the search you will get Google-like results from the entire universe of Microsoft products, most having little or nothing to do with the application you are using. It's useless. Actually, Google on the web is much better! What happened to an application-specific help facilitiy with a table of contents, index, and word search? The new help must save cost for Microsoft, but it's very little help and another example of technical mediocrity, in this case very deliberate.

There is so much more, but this will do for now. What's the point of complaining - I don't get any warm feelings that Microsoft ever listens.

I wish I had the courage (and time) to just switch to Linux.

Google Desktop vs. Copernic

The basic idea: What if I could search my own computer as easily as I can search the web? Then I could find an email or a Word document, even a PDF document, or a previously-viewed web page, or all of those on my own computer in an instant, just by entering a few words of text that I think might be in the document or in its name.

Enter Google Desktop (GD). I discovered this a year or two ago, when I was running Windows XP, and thought it was slicker than sliced bread. Well, almost, and certainly better than anything that Microsoft offered. It didn't work exactly right - sometimes I would click on a result and nothing would come up - but at least it did seem to find everything.

Except WordPerfect documents. I use WordPerfect and certainly prefer it to Microsoft Word, but the documents apparently have a unique format and are not correctly indexed by GD or by Microsoft's Vista indexing software. No surprise that Microsoft would deliberately omit WordPerfect, because they have been trying to bury it with Word for years (with obvious success), but we expect better from Google. There is a contributed Google Desktop plugin called Larry's WordPerfect Indexer, and it seemed to work when installed, but Google Desktop kept uninstalling it for some reason; I never solved that problem.

Enter Windows Vista; I have the 64-bit version. It supposedly has its own indexing, but I find that awkward and obtuse; I still haven't entirely figured what IS and what IS NOT indexed. Google Desktop was better.

However, if you Google "google desktop" and "vista" you will find complaints about Google Desktop slowing down Vista, and you will find that Google and Microsoft are having a legal hassle. Nevertheless a few days ago I downloaded GD and installed it. To my surprise, GD did not offer ANY indexing commands. I could not make it re-index, and there was no pause-indexing command. When I did a GD search it DID come up with results though, without ever doing an indexing search. From this I assume that it uses Vista's built-in index, and no longer builds its own index. I "installed" Larry's WordPerfect Indexer, but of course a search still did not bring up any WordPerfect documents. Conclusion: At least for now, Google Desktop is broken - no better than Vista's search, which itself is very clumsy and which will apparently never be able to search WordPerfect documents.

Enter Copernic. I downloaded this desktop searcher and couldn't be more pleased. It runs exactly the same on both XP (my laptop) and Vista 64 (my new desktop computer). In both cases it built its index in almost no time at all. Here are some of the features:

• It automatically indexes WordPerfect documents - important to me if not to you;
• You can select the types of files it will index, including PDF documents and ZIP folders, by type extension;
• You choose whether the indexing function pauses while you use the computer, and if so, for how long;
• You choose which folders you index and which you do not. For example, I have files that are encrypted and certainly don't want them in the index!;
• Regardless how the index is built, you can limit a search to any particular file type, to avoid getting too many results;
• For any specific class of files you can limit the search by date, partial file name, folder, and other attributes;
• There is a quick and easy way to check for updates to Copernic;
• I haven't even discovered all of the features yet.

Copernic does NOT seem to offer complex (advanced) searches. It seems to require that ALL of the words in the search box must appear in the document, with no "ANY" option or "DOES NOT HAVE" option. But I can live with that. Many of the features in the list above are also available in Google Desktop and Vista Search, but not all of them are.

I've only had Copernic for a couple of days now, but it sure seems far more robust than the competition, and yet easier to use. Unlike those, it's a completed, working product. If I continue to like it, I may just turn off Vista indexing altogether.

Please let me know if you agree, or disagree, or want more information.

TrueCrypt Is Cool

My business requires me to safeguard the security of certain files. For years I have used Encrypted Magic Folders (EMF) from PC-Magic to encrypt those files, and to hide them from the view of an interloper. I loved it, because files were always encrypted on disk and yet were fully accessible to applications. However, when I upgraded to Vista 64, the new EMF crashed my system so completely that it was unbootable even in safe mode. I tried it twice, recovered twice with some difficulty, and gave up on EMF.

In the meantime I had heard about TrueCrypt, an open-source disk encryption package for Windows and Linux. It's free! I must admit that after I downloaded it, I needed some time to get my mind around it.

Here are the basics:

• Using the TrueCrypt application you create a large "container" file on your system, larger than you will need to hold your encrypted files. It can be on any read/write disk, even a memory stick, and is initially filled with random data.
• The container file can be copied, moved, deleted, or renamed just like any other file. It's not fragile. It can have any name and any file extension. You can have more than one.
• With the TrueCrypt application, you mount that container file as a disk volume with its own drive letter. You choose the letter.
• The TrueCrypt application runs in the background and manages TrueCrypt volumes.
• Within the TrueCrypt volume you create folders, or copy them in, and create or copy in any files that ought to be encrypted. A TrueCrypt volume behaves exactly like any other disk, even though it's really just a file on your hard drive or mem stick. Every file within it is totally encrypted, including file names and even its file system.
• Unused space in the TrueCrypt container file is filled with random data which cannot be distinguished from actual encrypted files.
• When you open an encrypted file in an application, such as a wordprocessor or graphic editor, the file is decrypted on the fly so that the application sees it decrypted.
• The file is never decrypted on disk, however, unless the application keeps temporary backup copies, and of course you should tell your applications to keep those in an encrypted volume too.
• Backup of encrypted data is easy: Just dismount the encrypted volume and copy its container file, still encrypted, to the backup medium.
• If the backup medium is another disk, mem stick, DVD, or CD-ROM, you can actually mount that backup container file whenever you want without ever copying it back to the original hard disk.

That's the simple view of TrueCrypt. There is lots more. For example:

• Anyone examining your system or your disk can tell that you use TrueCrypt, and can probably even identify the container files.
• However, you can host a TrueCrypt volume within another truecrypt volume in a manner that makes the internal volume both hidden and undectable even if the outer volume is mounted and visible. Really cool. The TrueCrypt people call this "plausible deniability," and consider it quite important.
• Example: An adversary points a gun at you and demands to see your encrypted files. You can give them the password to the outer encrypted volume without ever revealing that an inner, hidden volume even exists. It's invisible. I don't actually see the need for a hidden volume in my business, but evidently some folks do.
• You can host a truecrypt volume on a public computer, or another person's computer, without installing any software on that computer, so your encrypted files are portable.
• You can tell TrueCrypt to mount certain TrueCrypt volumes automatically at bootup, though you will be required to enter a password to complete the mounting process.
• TrueCrypt allows you to use any of eight different encryption algorithms and three different hash algorithms, making decryption by an adversary even more difficult.

I love it, and in fact am using it for my encrypted files on my new computer. It works very well indeed, even on Vista 64. It is certainly no more trouble than EMF was, and backup is much simpler. It is far better than Windows Encrypted File System (EFS) because: (1) EFS files are always available when you log on, whereas TrueCrypt files require you to enter another password; and (2) EFS files cannot easily be backed up in their encrypted form. TrueCrypt is also much simpler than Windows BitLocker encryption, which requires you to partition your drive and poses some risk of losing the entire drive if something goes wrong.

Windows Vista Ultimate

I'm not yet a big fan of Windows Vista, but unless I go to some form of Unix it is in my future whether I like it or not. The machine I am building will support the fanciest operating system that Microsoft makes, which is 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate.

It would certainly also support Windows Vista Business, which is about $50 cheaper than Ultimate, but Ultimate has two things I might want that are not in Business:

• Media Center stuff - I could become interested in this, and
• Windows BitLocker, drive encryption.

So I ordered Windows Vista Ultimate, full, not upgrade or OEM, from VioSoftware for $253.22. Note: VioSoftware has two prices for this software package, one if you go to PriceGrabber first and a higher one if you go directly to VioSoftware. There is a $27 difference.