New Iomega REV 35GB/90GB Drive Now Shipping

“The new Iomega REV drive is a unique and versatile product that changes the rules of data backup, combining superior reliability and performance with breakthrough pricing,” said Werner Heid, president and CEO of Iomega Corporation. “Backing up to tape has always involved compromises because tape is a relatively fragile, slow and expensive linear-access technology. Iomega’s new REV drive makes backup and system or file recovery tasks faster, easier and less costly. Small business owners and IT managers will save immediately in terms of labor, hardware costs and system downtime.”

Revolutionary Performance
The Iomega REV drive offers the removeability of tape with the speed and ease of use of a hard drive. REV disks transfer data up to eight times faster than tape**, are smaller than a deck of playing cards (10 x 77 x 75 mm), and can be rewritten more than a million times (estimated). With a maximum sustained transfer rate of 25 MB/sec, and using drag and drop random access technology, REV users can copy and restore individual files in seconds.

Revolutionary Reliability
With patent-pending advanced two-stage error correction and patent-pending automatic head cleaning, Iomega REV technology achieves an error rate three orders of magnitude better than that of today’s sealed hard drives. The REV drive design keeps the sensitive read/write heads and electronics sealed in the REV drive, and for increased reliability, a patent-pending air filtration system creates a virtual “clean room” environment inside the removable disk. Iomega REV disks are engineered to provide an extremely durable and reliable shelf life, estimated to exceed 30 years.

The Tape Replacement Opportunity
Easy to use and less than half the price of most competing tape products, Iomega’s REV drive outperforms more expensive tape alternatives like DDS-4, DAT-72, VXA®, AIT-1, and DLT VS80. Gartner estimates this market to be around 1 million units in 2004 (Gartner, 2003 Tape Drives Forecast Report, June 3, 2003).

The new REV drive also appeals to a broader market of individuals and businesses that have avoided tape backup products because they are slow, expensive, and difficult to use. The market for REV backup in small and medium-sized businesses is sizeable, with 7.9 million small businesses (under 100 employees) and 93,000 mid-size firms (100 to 999 employees) in the U.S. (IDC estimate). Medical, legal, financial and other such businesses faced with regulatory compliance requirements for data archiving, and the millions of home office households confronting a growing deluge of data, further extend the market for internal and external REV drives as an ideal backup, archiving, and portable storage solution.

“Iomega’s REV drive is a compelling alternative for customers who have traditionally used tape for backup and data protection on their entry level servers as well as high-end desktops,” said Robert Amatruda, research manager at IDC. “REV’s performance, easy-of-use and attractive price make it a good fit for small businesses that value high-capacity removable storage.”

The OEM Opportunity
Major PC OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are currently evaluating REV drives for use in server and business desktop systems, products that often ship without high-capacity backup due to the high cost of tape. Currently, both the external USB 2.0 version and the internal ATAPI version of the Iomega REV drive are available at the Web sites of major PC OEMs and other channel partners, as well as at www.iomega.com.

German manufacturer BDT GmbH & Co. K.G., a world leader in tape autoloader products, has already announced (November 2003) a letter of intent whereby BDT is exploring the possibility of developing autoloader products using Iomega REV technology. BDT currently supplies about 70 percent of the low-end autoloader market through its OEM relationships with leading computer companies, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Quantum and ADIC. Iomega and BDT envision a range of breakthrough autoloader products using REV technology, from full height 5.25-inch single drive products with 280GB of native storage capacity to multi-drive 4U configurations with over 4TB of native storage.

The Vertical Market Opportunity The REV drive has the speed, capacity and reliability to transform large file tasks in any business. Vertical market computer users who will be delighted with these features and the virtually unlimited storage expandability of the REV drive include: Video producers that archive professional video and graphics projects; Engineers and consolutants that manage CAD/CAM and GIS data; Graphic designers/software developers; Companies and stores that manage surveillance video; Government offices that want to lock away sensitive data on removable media with password protection; Healthcare professionals that need to archive patient records and transfer large medical images; and Students that need to maintain their own disk space in shared computing environments. Revolutionary Software Included with every Iomega REV drive is Iomega Automatic Backup Pro software, which provides frequent file-level backup to a REV drive. Once configured, the “no-touch” software automatically backs up specified files (including multiple revisions); keeps multiple backup sets on different destination drives; excludes user-selected files by file type, and performs scheduled backups. Powerful professional-level features include 2.6:1 compression and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) file encryption, along with support for Windows® server operating systems.

Symantec’s Norton Ghost™ for REV™ Drive software is also included for full-system disaster recovery, letting users capture an exact image of the computer’s main hard drive partition, including all data files, system files, settings and installed software. If disaster strikes, the disk image can be easily copied back to the replacement drive from the REV disk.

Iomega is also working with leading storage software vendors to certify compatibility between their solutions and the new Iomega REV drive. Compatibility will enable joint customers to have a wide variety of software solutions for essential storage requirements, such as data backup and business continuity.

The initial REV products herald a new generation of exciting backup technologies from Iomega. Later in 2004 Iomega expects to release Boot and Run™ software, which provides home and business users with prompt disaster recovery. If a primary hard drive fails, users can simply “Boot and Run” directly from an Iomega REV drive, giving them access to all the files, applications and functionality of their primary internal hard drive, until the failed drive can be replaced.

Compatibility and Requirements Supported operating systems include Microsoft® Windows® XP Home and Professional; Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition; and Windows 2000 Server/Professional/Advanced Server (SP3 and SP4). Minimum hardware requirements include a 333 MHz Pentium II with a compatible USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 connection. (USB 2.0 is required to achieve maximum speeds.)

Pricing and Availability The Iomega REV drive is now shipping in USB 2.0 external ($399.99 with one disk included) and ATAPI internal ($379.99 with one disk included) configurations. REV disks are available individually ($59.99) or in a four-pack ($199.95); all prices are U.S. suggested retail. Iomega REV autoloaders, which will support multiple disks per drive unit, are currently planned for introduction in the second half of 2004. FireWire®, SCSI and SATA models are also planned for introduction in the second half of this year.