Editor's note: We recently retested the Iomega eGo after the manufacturer noted that our write test speeds were much slower than its tests predicted. We tested a new unit and have changed the review accordingly.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The Iomega eGo portable hard drive sports a stylish look and compact size. It's currently offered in just one capacity--160GB--but it's available in two colors, red and silver. The look and feel of this drive is impressive. The anodized-aluminum-and-polished-steel case resembles a flask and we find ourselves wanting to handle it constantly. But looks aren't everything; performance is important too. Happily, this drive performs as well as it looks. If you're looking for a stylish, flashy drive with fast read/write speeds, this $130 drive is a great choice.
| Drive type | Portable, external |
| Connector options | USB 2.0 |
| Available capacities | 160GB |
| Drive speed | 5,400RPM |
| Cache | 8MB |
| Dimensions (LWH) | 5.25 x 3.5 x 0.75 inches |
| Notable design features | None |
| OSes supported | Windows 2000 Pro, XP Home, XP Pro, Vista; Mac OS X 10.1.5 or higher |
| Software included | EMC Retrospect (for PC only) |
| Service and support | One-year limited warranty; pay-per-incident phone support ($25): weekdays, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET; Iomega site includes live one-on-one Web chat, forums, FAQs, software downloads, product documentation, and how-to videos. |
The Iomega eGo was one of the fastest portable hard drives we've tested over USB. It wrote a 10GB folder of mixed file types in 9 minutes, 54 seconds. The Seagate FreeAgent Go wrote the same folder in 10 minutes, 33 seconds. The Iomega eGo read back that same folder to the testbed drive in 8 minutes, 11 seconds; the FreeAgent Go took just a few more seconds to do the job.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
 | Read | | Write |