Iomega 500GB UltraMax Desktop Hard Drive for $169 @ the apple store, Good Deal or No?

Hi All,

Just browsing the apple store for any good deals, I stumble upon this one & I wanna know what you guys think.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY
APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=85A10F4B&fnode=home&nplm=TP946LL/A

Little Desc:

Specifications

Capacity: 500GB
Formatted: HSF+
Interface: USB 2.0, FireWire 400
Compatibility: Mac and PC
Rotational speed: 7200 RPM
Cache buffer: 8MB
Dimensions (HxWxL): 5.0 x 1.67 x 9.5 in./12.7 x 4.25 x 24.13 cm

Thanks.

Don't even have to look at it. No, not a good deal. 1) iomega is one of those companies that do not make hard drives, and do not even reveal whose drive is in the case, 2) 8MB cache, all decent 500GB drives will have a 16MB cache, 3) You should be able to find several others for less money and/or longer warranties than iomega's 1 yr offering.

Try newegg, amazon, bet they've both got some great sales right now. You could even check out OWC.

You can build one that size or bigger for less. Hit newegg and look at enclosures and HDD's. You may have heard this before but I did it recently and 1) I got more HDD space for the money, 2) it was cheaper and 3) It took all of 15 minutes to set up, literally.

You can get 500GB WD My Book drives on Newegg all day for $120 and I would trust WD much more than Iomega.

Don't trust WD either...

I have a 500 GB mybook that I used for footage offloading on an indie HD film that I just shot. I had about 30 hours of material on there and about 80% of it disappeared this weekend. I went through two recovery programs before I came upon Data Rescue II which, thankfully, recovered about 95% of the files. Highly recommend that program... for $100, it does something it'd cost you $400-$2000 to get done at a data recovery facility.

I know, I know, I know... it should have been backed up. I was too cheap and kept putting it off. I got off lucky and it woke me up, that's for sure.

Anyway, I bought an iomega ultramax pro 1.5 TB drive from B&H for $510.00 and I think it was well worth it. First off, I was surprised to find out that the drives inside are two 750 GB Seagate Barracudas. As far as I know, Seagates are one of the most dependable drives. Besides that, I was also able to stripe it as RAID 1, which gives me a bit more peace of mind. I don't know much about this, does Seagate have anything to do with Iomega or does Iomega just make drive enclosures? I wonder what's inside this 500 GB Ultramax. Better than the My Book, I'm willing to wager!

*Moved thread to proper forum*

Watch closely for sales the next few weeks...WD had 500GB mybooks for 99 dollars and 1TB models for 199 for their friday/saturday sales last week. I expect they will be priced close to the same as christmas approaches.