Iomega Professional External Hard Drive 1TB review

Iomega's 1TB Professional hard disk has a sturdy and attractive metal design although the effect is spoiled by the cheap-looking plastic end caps at the front and rear. Nonetheless it's quiet and it can be positioned on your desk either horizontally or vertically using the included stand.

The Professional is so-named because it has an eSATA as well as a USB port for transferring large amounts of data quickly. When connected via eSATA, large files were read at just under 88MB/s, while small files were read at 40.3MB/s. Large files were written at 73.3MB/s, while small files were written at 43.2MB/s. Although the Professional is unmatched among eSATA disks when reading files, we've seen other disks that are a lot faster at writing them.

When connected over USB, the Professional's file transfer speeds were generally in line with what we'd expect from a USB desktop disk. Large files were transferred at an overall speed of just under 30MB/s, which is fast. It was also quick writing small files at 26.3MB/s, although it read them at 20MB/s which is a little slower than we expected.

Included with the Professional is EMC's Retrospect Express HD backup software. The wizard-style interface is a little fussy and can get in the way, but it's a capable and useful program to have. It can back up your files according to a schedule you set. It saves time by only copying those files that have changed since the last back up. It can also keep older versions of your files in case you wish to revert to a previous version.

The Iomega 1TB Professional External Hard Drive is a good desktop disk, but it's a little overpriced at £100 - or 10p per gigabyte. This is as expensive as some USB3 disks, which are faster than the Professional when connected using USB3. If your computer already has an eSATA port, it's a reasonable choice, but there are better deals elsewhere.