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Iomega eGo is a series of portable hard drives manufactured by the Iomega Corporation. Iomega is one of the leading manufacturers of portable computer storage hardware and media. Portable hard drives are external hard disk drives that are placed outside the computer and connected using a cable. The cables used with external hard drives include the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI), the Integrated Drive Electronics Interface (IDE), the Universal Serial Bus (USB), the IEEE 1394 (Firewire), the CAT-3 or CAT-5 cable (Ethernet) and the eSATA or other interface standards. These drives are mainly used where extra storage space is required. Currently, commercial external hard disks drives of high capacity (up to 1.5 terabytes) are available from manufacturers such as Hitachi, SimpleTech, Western Digital, Seagate, CMS, Maxtor and LaCie. External hard drives were popular on the Apple Macintosh. Every Mac made between 1986 and 1998 had a SCSI port at the back, which made connecting peripheral devices easy.

The Iomega eGo series disks are ultra portable and can easily fit into a briefcase or even a shirt pocket. Iomega eGo is USB-powered so no external power supply is required: you can just plug–and-play the device. Moreover, it is robust, stylish and offers high-capacity storage, perfect for professionals who travel a lot and need to carry large amount of data. Both USB 2.0 and USB 2.0/FireWire interfaces are available for PC as well as Mac users. The eGo hard disk drives are available from 160GB to 250GB capacities with a red, white or black finish. They are equipped with professional-level backup and disaster recovery software, dual interface for seamless support on PCs and/or Macs, and EMC Retrospect software for file backup and data protection.

The Iomega eGo spins at 5400 rpm, which is considered slower than some similarly priced hard drives like the CMS Automatic Backup System Plus for Mac desktops, which spins at 7200 rpm. However, the eGo is suited for those who don’t want to dismantle their computer to add another hard drive. Overall, this hard drive series is good value for money. External drives are good for backups and can also be configured to be bootable and used like the hard drive in a computer.

Currently, other external media storage devices like flash memories and memory cards are also available. These are known to provide better data security. However, the external hard drives are less costly and are the only portable data storage media to come in very high storage capacities.