Iomega EZ Media & Backup Center Network Attached Hard Disk Review
by Ganesh T S on November 27, 2012 4:45 PM ESTMiscellaneous Factors and Final Words
The Iomega EZ unit ships with a 24W power adapter. With the unit idling and not connected to the network, the power consumption at the wall was 10.1 W. When connected to the network, but, without any external traffic, the average power consumed was 11.6 W. Extended sequential reads and writes consumed 14.2 W and 13.5 W respectively. The unit has no active cooling, and so, there is no fan noise to worry about. That said, the hard disk inside the unit seems to quite aggressive with respect to head parking. There is an audible clicking noise when this happens. Iomega would do well to configure the head parking interval to be set close to the power down interval in the web UI, or even disable it altogether.
The Iomega EZ Media and Backup Center serves as an interesting solution for users looking for something a little more powerful than a simple hard disk attached to their router's USB port. The EZ unit has some unique and interesting functions built into the firmware. As for the capabilities of the LifeLine OS, I am waiting to evaluate it with a multi-bay NAS before forming a final opinion. The EZ unit is simply not powerful enough to utilize the full capabilities of the OS.
The main competition for the EZ unit is the Western Digital My Book Live lineup. Compared to that, the EZ unit comes short in terms of performance and ease of use. However, it has a physical power button, an additional USB port to tag on external storage and it is very easy to disassemble and replace the hard disk, if necessary. Ultimately, the choice may boil down to a matter of price. Despite the advertised MSRP of $209.99, the 2 TB version can be purchased for as low as $130 today. The lowest price I could find for the equivalent My Book Live was $140.
The Iomega EZ Media & Backup Center is yet another option for the consumers to consider when looking for a single-bay network attached hard disk. As long as the expectations are set straight before purchase, the end user is likely to be satisfied with the performance and capabilities of the unit.
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eas - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I really doubt that box has a dual core CPU.I think people need to pay more attention to ZyXEL's Kirkwood based offerings. With 512MB or RAM, they have more RAM than most of the other single and dual drive Kirkwood NAS, they are also cheaper than most. The dual dbay nsa320 is typically $110 or so, and often on sale for $80-90. The firmware seems solid and full featured, plus it can have additional packages installed. I don't have a lot of real world experience with it because I only ran it for a few weeks before following through on my plan to install Debian Squeeze.
batguiide - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
thanks these tips!socanpower,ca,you will love this website!jonte - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - link
After my experience with a UltraMax and a failing drive which the mirrored raid system could not handle I must advice to avoid their technology and their support and warrant policy.http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&am...
Be warned.
bill in pa - Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - link
I just read in my research of this unit from another web site,that you CANNOT plug the unit directly into the computer you must go through a router first?
This does not sound right or make sense to me and I questioned it on that site but have not received any answer.
Can you help on this point? I believe that it would connect directly
into the computers USB drive, am I correct?
bill in pa
radiodave - Friday, April 5, 2013 - link
That's correct. You need to hook it up to a router to access it. This thing has been a total disaster. RMA'd the first one as the hard drive chattered endlessly (very loud) and was only intermittently accessible. The second one is quiet, but still very hit and miss as far as availabilty on my network. It can't handle more than one task at a time. I'm looking to take mine apart and use the hard drive in a Synology DS212j, but I'm having trouble getting the Iomega case apart. Are there photos of what screws to remove? There are two on the back and one on the bottom, but the insides still won't slide out with them removed.DRB - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Fyi! Looks like another screw below the black sticker on the bottom....but removal will probably void the warranty...Papakilo - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
I have an EZ media 2TB Media and Backup Center bought in the US, not under warranty now.The 2 TB Seagate Barracuda HDD burnt out and I need to replace with a new drive.I understand that the OS was on the original HDD. I saw your review comment `it is very easy to disassemble and replace the hard disk, if necessary'. How can i install the OS on to the new HDDdo myself, any advise would be appreciated.Niels1982 - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
Dear Papakilo, id you manage to disassamble the original hardisk from the machine?fbarrena - Sunday, May 3, 2015 - link
"Quite easy to take apart". Can you give more details? This device is a mess. I just need to take out the hard disk in order to recover the files, and I'll put the rest in the trash can. I tried removing the 3 screws which are visible, but coudn't take the motherboard and disk out from the cabinet.pramodsudhindra - Friday, June 22, 2018 - link
were you able to progress ? i am stuck with the same predicament - have tons of photos and the drive/unit just decided to go to the holy maker! even when it was working, had a mind of its own.