Iomega Mac Companion (3TB)

Do you have the Apple logo burned into your retinas? Then the Iomega Mac Companion (3TB) is the external hard drive for you. Designed for the Mac desktop (or large-screen display) user who needs more storage, the $369.99 (list) Mac Companion is iOS-device friendly and has a powered USB port that will help reduce workstation clutter. If you have a space-constrained cube environment and can put up with a couple of usage quirks, this could be the backup-storage drive you're looking for.

Design and Features
The Mac Companion is a trapezoidal, wedge-shaped device intended to sit out of the way on that bit of exposed metal stand beneath your iMac or Apple display. It's a neat bit of design that riffs on the competition using the Mac aesthetic: a silvery aluminum outer shell, and black plastic panels on the back and top (a semi-opaque Iomega logo blends nicely into the latter). On the front of the Man Companion is a series of four LEDs, telling you at a glance whether the drive is empty (four white LEDs), half full (two white LEDs), or 90 percent full (one red LED). The right side has a Kensington security port, plus a high-power USB port that will charge an iPad faster than the USB ports on your Mac. (Note: Using the USB port to sync requires plugging the included USB cable into your Mac?more on that later.) The left side of the drive is blank, but there's plenty of action on the back: There are no extra-fast USB 3.0 ports to be found, but there are a USB Type B port to connect to your Mac, two regular USB 2.0 ports acting as a USB hub, and two FireWire 800 ports.

Which of these should you use for data? If you want speed, you obviously want to use the FireWire. But if you want to use the three USB ports as a USB hub, you'll need to hook up the USB cable to the Mac Companion. Both can't be used at the same time, however. If you connect via FireWire, the USB port on the right-hand side works as a 1000mA charge-only port. If you use USB to connect the drive, the USB ports in the hub start working, including the charge/sync port on the right side of the drive, but only at a 500mA current level. It's confusing, particularly for the novice user who assumes that all included cables must be connected. Doing that causes you to risk data corruption, if the drive even shows up in the Finder at all. You'd better hope your Mac user is somewhat savvy before setting up the Mac Companion.

Considering the port situation, the most useful configuration for a power user would probably be connecting a FireWire 800 cable for data, a USB cable for sync, and a separate USB cable to the right-side USB port for charging an iPad or other iOS device (but alas, this won't work). The power user therefore is stuck with FireWire 800 for data, and the right side USB connector acting as a charge-only port. For novice and mobile users who hate plugging and unplugging cables, the best connection is the single USB cable, so the USB hub works (along with the right-hand charge port). Just note that the USB connection is slower than FireWire for file transfers (see the "Performance" section).

The Mac Companion comes formatted for HFS+, so it will work well with Time Machine out of the box. You can also download several backup and Internet security apps from Iomega's website. The drive comes with a three-year warranty, which is pretty good for a consumer-class hard drive.

Performance
The Mac Companion is a 7,200rpm desktop-class drive, and delivers average performance for its class. It took 42 seconds to transfer our standard 1.22GB test folder over USB 2.0 and 30 seconds over FireWire 800. Contrast this with the Western Digital My Passport Studio (1TB) ($179.99 list, 4 stars), which took 44 seconds with USB 2.0 and 31 seconds with FireWire 800. The former Editors' Choice Iomega eGo BlackBelt Mac Edition ($199.99 list, 4 stars) was a smidge faster (35 seconds with USB 2.0, 22 seconds with FireWire 800). Likewise, the Mac Companion was decent on the AJA System test for throughput: 37MBps read and 30MBps write on USB 2.0, and 50MBps read and 38MBps write on FireWire 800. The My Passport Studio was the fastest among these three, the eGo Blackbelt was the slowest. What does this mean? The Iomega Mac Companion will serve you well, whether you use the drive for storage, backup, or work (as a scratch disk or temporary storage).

Compared with pocket drives like the My Passport Studio and eGo Blackbelt, the Iomega Mac Companion (3TB) outclasses both in dollar per GB, as the Mac Companion is a desktop drive with a less expensive drive mechanism. Our current desktop Editors' Choice is the ioSafe SoloPRO desktop drive ($249.99 list, 4.5 stars), which is much larger but retains its title thanks to ruggedization and an included data recovery service plan. The Iomega Mac Companion certainly lives up to its name?a companion drive for the desktop-bound Mac user?earns our recommendation.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Buffalo MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0 with several other hard drive side by side.

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??? Iomega Mac Companion (3TB)
??? LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (240GB SSD)
??? Seagate Momentus XT (750GB)
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