Iomega Home Media Network Drive (500GB)

Pros: price. you can get this for $109.00usd, in comparison the western digital my book world edition 500GB is $200.

Cons: noisy fan, cannot connect to computer via USB.

Summary: i just bought this, the fan doesn't ever shut off, unlike what was stated in the review, so i will probably return it. it's too noisy for my living room. by rotating the unit i was able to stop the high pitched noise, but it's still going to make the humming noise that fans make.

some other observations - it's very heavy due to the metal enclosure, which i didn't care for. the status lights need to be on the front where they can be seen, not on the side toward the rear.

another major drawback to this unit is that you can't directly connect it via USB to a computer and drag and drop files. so if you have all of your files on this drive you can't just connect it to a family, friends', or new computer and drag and drop files to the new drive. basically, if you're in recovery mode you need it connected to a network.

still, if you can live with the fan then all the other issues are mostly minor and the price of this drive makes it very attractive. i might even keep it and just turn it on when i want to do a backup and otherwise power it down to avoid the fan noise.