Iomega's stylin' storage for MacBook Air

Stephen Withers
Friday, 03 October 2008 10:06

Opinion and Analysis

Staying within the space provided by the 80G hard drive or even worse the 64G solid state drive offered with the MacBook Air could be a problem, so you'll most likely need external storage. Someone once said you can't be too rich or too slim, but when it comes to computers you can't have too much storage space.

Yes, a thumb drive is probably the lightest and least power-hungry device, but if you feel the need for hundreds of gigabytes of storage for all those photos and other media files, a hard disk is still the way to go.

Another reason for wanting a hard disk is for backup, perhaps using Mac OS X's Time Machine.

But in case Time Machine isn't your cup of tea, the eGo Helium comes with Retrospect Express and MozyHome backup software, both from Iomega's parent company EMC.

Retrospect Express handles backup to hard disks, optical discs and removable drives; MozyHome provides remote backup to data centres operated by EMC.

If you want a peek at what the eGo Helium looks like, try here.

While the USB bus-powered device comes preformatted as HFS+ to suit the Mac, it can be reformatted as NTFS or FAT32. Windows users can also download Retrospect Express HD for Windows, which includes MozyHome integration.

The eGo Helium isn't the cheapest 320G portable drive on the market, but if you've forked out for a MacBook Air, why spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar?