Digital Home Thoughts: Portable Storage: IOGEAR's 20 GB COMBO 1.8" ION Drive

Tests and Trials


Figure 8: The Combo ION drive in all its shiny glory.

While we could spout all sorts of technical data about transfer speeds vs the 4200 RPM drive based upon which connection you chose, I prefer some real world, old fashioned, let's-see-what-it-can-do tests.

The read/write speed from my laptop was almost unbearable - but this wasn't due to the ION, but because my laptop only has USB 1.1. It took almost 2 minutes to write just 66Mb! The read test (using HD_Speed) showed a peak of 800KB/s with an average of 758KB/s.

Read/write speeds via USB 2.0 on my home computer were stellar. A little over 1GB of data to the device in under 2 minutes. The same read test as above peaked at 20Mb/s with the average at 19Mb/s. More than sufficient for most general tasks.


Figure 9: ION loaded and ready to act as a media drive for Acid Pro.

On both machines I used the ION as a "media" drive, and attempted to use the drive exclusively for my Acid Pro libraries. From the PC side (USB 2.0), the delay was barely noticeable. On the laptop (USB 1.1), the load delay was much longer.

I did notice a bit of noise from the drive (specifically head clatter), but only following when the drive was not in use. Otherwise the drive was extremely quiet.

Conclusions
Personally, I found the ION Combo drive to be perfect for my situation (namely backing up data on my laptop, but also for use with Acid Pro). Because drives (laptop and PC) are so cheap, I doubt I would use the ION as a replacement or add-on drive in the long term, but as a backup drive, the ION would stay as a regular in my travel pack. As for the cabling, while it is a little overwhelming to carry around, thankfully does allow you to use the drive in multiple locations with minimal fuss. A great drive with great potential, especially if the prices come down...