The brushed aluminium finish on Iomega’s Desktop Hard Drive is striking, though its rounded edges mean that the included dock is necessary if you want to stand it upright. It’s solid, and the brushed metal makes it appear hefty, but it weighs in at a reasonably lightweight 1.26kg.

Its 34mm thickness is considerably more slender than most others here – making it one of the few you could slip into a laptop bag for on-the-go storage. Add in the choice of laying it flat on its little rubber feet or placing it in the plastic stand provided and it works out to be a very flexible device. Sadly, there’s no way to screw the Iomega into its stand for added stability.

The drives design is also uncluttered; there’s just a power button at the rear and a blue light on the top to indicate hard disk activity. Next to that switch and the power input socket sits the sole USB connector.

The Iomega performed in line with the other USB drives on test. The 100MB file collection was written to the drive in 9.1 seconds and read in 5.6 seconds. The 50MB file finished writing in 1.6 seconds and read from the drive in 1.4 seconds. All perfectly respectable results.

The lack of any other connectivity options precludes the Prestige from any groundbreaking performance, but over USB it still manages to hold its own.
Performance is not the main problem here, however, it’s the high price. For a 500GB disk, the $169 price tag means that the Iomega Desktop Hard Drive is works out to 34c. That might be okay if it had more than USB.

Unfortunately it doesn’t have the eSATA port, warranty and gorgeous design of its rivals, so falls short of a recommendation this month.