Iomega Makes Home Data Stations an Easy Go
We ask you, who doesn’t have multiple computers, as well as various inane important documents, multiple music files and more pictures of your rose garden and extended pet family than is humanly possible to store? And it’s all too easy to let them rest on multiple thumb drives or external backup drives, left lying about because you run out of USB ports or cannot connect them to multiple computers.
Enter Iomega and their interesting solution- the Iomega iConnect Wireless Data Station unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas earlier this year. This is an unusual device, made for folks with specific needs and solves a problem we have rarely found ourselves having. It’s good-looking and easy on the eyes, but that isn’t necessarily indicative of what we look for in our USB storage. It’s worth mentioning upfront that iConnect doesn’t support USB 3.0 or eSATA, nor does it come with any backup software in the package. Basically, this is a small box that takes your USB data storage devices and printers and makes them network-accessible, through either ethernet or wireless. There are other features as well, such as the fact it easily turns those random backup drives into an instant media server (UPnP DLNA certified).
We were pleased the iConnect does support both PCs and Macs, including Time Machine Support: Apple users can back up Macs running OS X (10.5 or later) using Time Machine. It can also support certain Linux set-ups, though our issues lie in the documentation. In the manual it discusses how to run software for Windows and Mac but absentmindedly neglects Linux.
We were able to set up the iConnect in a matter of minutes as we were provided with an ethernet cable, power cord, install CD and most importantly, instructions. We would suggest that while waiting for set-up, you thumb through How to Be a Geek Goddess and find your inner geeky core as well as practical applications. Though you are setting up a home data station- instant geek points.
We plugged it into our wireless router, plugged some of our USB drives into the iConnect, installed the software on our laptop and all 3 computers found the iConnect and their respective hard drives. We can now access our media files wirelessly on the laptop from anywhere in our place without having to carry the hard drive around. We also used our Xbox 360 to play some media files through the iConnect, and had no issues.
Remote access is a breeze as long as you’ve set up your network correctly. You can either use the on-device system or you just forward it yourself to the device (requires some knowledge of ports and router setup, but works better). All of the files are then easily accessible through the web interface- very cool. We were able to download while traveling with no complaints.
The Iomega has many of its counterparts beat for the price point but compared with full-size NAS servers, it has a long way to go. For some drives that require external power, it’s still awkward. Printer support is there, for up to two printers, but all-in-one printers don’t appear to support all functions smoothly. We also noticed that data transfers weren’t nearly as speedy as when drives were directly connected, and that some of the features don’t function quite as expected (QuikTransfer, for instance, shifts files from one connected drive to another instead of to or from a connected PC).
We were able to purchase from Amazon for around $70- a good deal if you find yourself in need of a way to manage multiple USB drives and devices and are willing to put up with some occasional issues.
