Verdict: The removable hard disk returns with a vengeance
Once upon a time, the Jaz drive was the Jedi Master of removable storage. Even before CD-writing had come of age, its 1GB of fast, removable hard disk storage seemed like the ultimate archiving medium. However, it was flaky in use and the media was very unreliable. As any Jaz drive owner will agree, this wasn't a format to which you'd want to archive anything important.
And so Jaz became obsolete in the face of ever cheaper CD-RW drives, and the arrival of DVD burners and the external USB 2 hard disk. It's a sad story, but perhaps it's going to have a happy ending, as Iomega has launched an all-new removable hard disk format. Like the return of Darth Vader, Jaz is back and it's much more powerful than you could possibly imagine. Except this time it's called Rev.
Rev isn't really anything like Jaz version three, other than being the same basic idea: a cartridge-based removable hard disk drive. There's no backwards compatibility with Jaz, as the design is completely different. Iomega has learnt from its mistakes and implemented a bunch of new technologies to make this a much more resilient format.
For a start, Iomega claims Rev cartridges have a 30-year shelf life. This claim is backed up by accelerated testing results. Sample cartridges were forced to endure temperatures and humidity considerably beyond normal conditions, and a scientific formula was used to calculate what the lifespan would be under normal circumstances - a bit like calculating cartridge life in dog years.
Iomega also claims each cartridge can handle a million re-writes. CD-RW or DVD+RW are only rated at 1,000 re-writes, and even the mega-durable DVD-RAM boasts just 100,000 before packing in, so Rev disks certainly have the staying power on paper. The drive itself has a few technical innovations to keep the disks pristine too. There's a dual-chamber sealing system, an air filtration mechanism and automatic head cleaning, all of which work together to prevent dust damaging cartridges.
Again on paper, Rev is a much more trustworthy format than Jaz ever was. Capacity has also been ramped up to a much more contemporary 35GB, although this is still a little meagre in the face of the 200-300GB hard disk monsters now available. It's fast too - Iomega claims transfer rates of between 20-25MB/sec.
We reviewed the external USB 2 version, although there's a slightly cheaper internal EIDE model available as well. Iomega also plans to release FireWire, SCSI and maybe even S-ATA versions in the second half of 2004, which will be collectively known as Rev Pro. The Rev is a sturdy little unit encased in thick plastic. It's much smaller than a Jaz drive, almost on a par with the most recent Zip drives. The cartridges are smaller, and feel like they'd live up to the durability claims too, with a solid metal baseplate to prevent flexing damage.
Once the Rev is hooked up via USB 2, the basic Windows XP drivers make it show up as a 35GB read-only drive. However, the Iomega drivers add a host of extra features. You can write and password-protect disks. As this works at the hardware level, the Iomega drivers aren't required to keep your data secure. A quick-formatting utility is also included with the drivers.
Iomega also supplies two options for backup: Iomega's own Automatic Backup Pro, and Symantec Norton Ghost. The former is a simple app for backing up data either on a regular basis, or dynamically as files change. It can maintain multiple revisions of a file, and offers an option to compress the data, although the latter will render backups readable only by Automatic Backup Pro. Norton Ghost takes a rather different approach. It backs up your system as a disk image, which can even be spanned across multiple cartridges. You boot from the supplied CD to perform the backup or restore, and you must have the Rev attached to a USB 2 port for it to work.
Backing up an image of your entire hard disk requires lots of speed, and the Rev mostly lives up to Iomega's performance claims. A mixed 520MB selection of files copied to the Rev in 33 seconds - that's approximately 15.8MB/sec - and transferred back in 38 seconds, approximately 13.7MB/sec. But the Rev came into its own when we tried a 2.74GB video file. This took just 123 seconds to copy to the Rev and 119 seconds to transfer back, equating to 22.8MB/sec and 23.6MB/sec respectively, which makes Iomega's claims bang on.
CONCLUSION
Rev can clearly compete on performance. But you can pick up an external hard disk with the same capacity for one-third of the price, and DVD writers are even cheaper. Although adding further cartridges makes the Rev much more competitive with the hard disk approach, at £1.13 per GB it's more expensive than the 30p per GB for DVD+RW. But you can store almost ten times as much data per disk at five times the speed, and you're nowhere near as likely to make a coaster as you are with optical formats. If you're looking for a storage medium you can trust to archive your media collection to, Iomega's Rev might just be the answer.
