Iomega targets Apple fans with new hard drive offerings

Iomega announced today that the company is expanding its lineup of products geared towards the Mac community. The announcement, made at the Apple Expo 2007 in Paris, covers both existing and new products. Support for the HFS+ file system, new designs, and a wider array of connection options are designed to attract the attention of Apple fans.

Dual-drive RAID products: The UltraMax Pro Desktop Hard Drives feature two hot-swappable SATA-II drives for RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurability. The industrial design mirrors that of the Apple Mac Pro desktop line. The UltraMax Pro lines comes in two configurations. The first version offers two FireWire 800 ports, one FireWire 400 port, and one USB 2.0 port, and comes in 640GB, 1TB, and 1.5TB capacities. This drive comes preformatted in HFS+. The second version comes only in a 1.5TB capacity, but offers eSATA and USB 2.0 interfaces. It's preformatted in FAT32.

Single-drive products: The UltraMax Desktop Hard Drive family is a line of single-drive products. The quad-interface version offers eSATA, FW800, FW400, and USB 2.0 interfaces, and comes in 750GB and 500GB capacities. The dual-interface version offers FW400 and USB 2.0 and comes in just the 500GB version.

The MiniMax Desktop Hard Drive now includes a new 750GB model (in addition to the existing 500GB model). It includes a hub with three USB 2.0 ports and three FireWire ports. The stackable design closely mimics that of the Mac Mini.

Additionally, the Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive is now available with two interfaces--FireWire 400 and USB 2.0--as well as a higher capacity: 250GB. All of these products come with EMC Retrospect Express software for backups.

The UltraMax Pro drives and the MiniMax are available now. The UltraMax drives (quad- and dual-interface), the 160GB dual-interface eGo, and the 250GB USB 2.0 eGo will be available in October, while the 250GB dual-interface eGo will be available in the fourth quarter of 2007.