OnStream ECHO 30 USB Storage Drive

Cost Analysis Comparison
To give you an idea of what this drive costs in comparison to other drives, we compiled some cost data on other removable storage drives. OnStream publishes their own cost comparison, but we did our own. The purpose of the chart is to illustrate the cost of the drive, its media and cost per GB. The figures assume 2:1 compression across all medians. Performance will be relatively the same across the USB platform as the limitation is 1.5MB/second.

Drive	Interface	Drive Cost	Capacity (compressed)	Media Cost	Media Cost/GB	Native Transfer Rate	ECC Reliability	Warranty
OnStream USB 30	USB	$259.00	30 GB	$44.95 (per tape)	$1.50	0.85MB/sec	1019	1 year
iomega Zip 250	USB	$179.00	250 MB	$20.00 (per disc)	$40 / GB	0.9MB/sec	1012	1 year
iomega Jaz 2GB	SCSI	$228.00	2 GB	$119.00 (per disc)	$29.75 / GB	7.5MB/sec	1012	1 year
Castlewood ORB USB 2.2GB	USB	$199.00	2.2 GB	$29.95 (per disc)	$7 / GB	1.0MB/sec	1012	1 year

Performance
Measuring these drive speeds is not incredibly accurate, but at least the statistics will give you an idea of its average speed. The drive is rated at 0.85MB/sec, and that is pretty much exactly what we achieved in our tests. A 720MB compressed file took approximately 15 minutes to backup, which is about 0.8 MB/Sec; CPU usage hovered between 3-15%. As the drive claims, it's great to store MP3's on. Several MP3's were copied over to the drive and then played back. Playback was smooth and uninterrupted. Seek time is, of course, slower than a hard drive. But, this drive is more suited to backing up data, and on occasion, playing a MP3 or a video from it. During playback of the MP3, CPU usage was anywhere between 3-15%, which is not bad at all for a USB device.

If 0.8 MB/sec isn't enough performance for you, you might want to look at the other portable solutions that OnStream has. They have announced a FireWire version of the drive, which is capable of 2MB/sec, and they also have a SCSI version of this drive, also capable of 2MB/sec.

Conclusion
OnStream has developed a portable, sleek, reasonably priced backup drive. The drive is quick, reliable and cost effective. The drive itself will run about $299 with a mail-in rebate. Tapes are about $119 for 3, which is about $1 per GB. The drive currently works in Windows 98 only. Windows 2000 support is coming, but not ready for the public yet.

Yet again OnStream has Impressed us with another quality product. If you are looking for a portable backup solution, this drive should definitely be on the top of your list. Enough can't be said about the quality and innovation that OnStream has put into the storage market in such a short time.