So quiet you wouldn't even know it was on if it never had the blue light. Starts up instantly no long delay. Easily recognised and vista ready.

I have owned both these Iomega drives and the SimpleTech drives, and I am convinced that the Omega drives do indeed last longer, meaning that they don't develop disk errors as quickly as the SimpleTechs. With that said, these drives are not perfect, but there are 2 things you can do to avoid problems: (1) purchase a small table fan to blow air over your drive(s). The metal exterior of these drives, will become quite hot to the touch during extended operation; this is normal and is meant to radiate the heat outward away from the inside to protect that actual drive, and a fan can certainly help this process. Secondly, I have found that the power switch and/or power plug hole (they are connected) of the Iomega drives in particular are not very durable. Try NOT to unplug/replug the power cable over and over again; instead, leave the power plug connected to the drive, leave the power switched on, and simply unplug from the wall. Finally, whatever you do, don't ever drop these drives! Even a short drop from ~ 4 ft off of a desk or table can be a fatal blow to your data. My advice: keep the drives low, close to the ground, on a lower shelf or short stand (with a separate small table fan for cooling!).

This item is exactly as described and reviewed on the Amazon site and has fit our need perfectly. It is dependable and easy to use.

It is true plug-and-play, the drive was immediately and quickly recognized, no problems there. I reformatted from FAT32 to NTFS for XP. Primarily used as a backup drive with Acronis true Image software. Backs up easily and I have had to restore my drive (operating system) once already. I have not had any noise problems or case heating up. The best part is that this drive can be switched off, and turned on only when needed.

This product is really easy to set up and holds so much. My lap top started working faster right away.