How can hard-drive companies jump on the iPad bandwagon? Seagate and Hitachi have created wireless drives designed to work with Apple’s tablet. Iomega is taking another approach. Its Mac Companion Hard Drive is a standard USB hard disk–and a desktop model at that–designed to charge an iPad.

As seen above, the Companion features an Apple-esque design and is sized to fit on the stand of an iMac or Apple monitor. It can connect to a Mac via FireWire 400/800 or USB 2.0, and has both a two-port USB 2.0 hub and the high-powered charging port required by the iPad.  (The USB 2.0 is a tipoff that Iomega really intends this drive for Mac users–otherwise, the company has been aggressively moving to USB 3.0, a technology which no Mac yet supports.)

The Companion is available in 1TB ($195) and 2TB ($295) versions, carries a three-year warranty, and will be available only at the Apple Store at first.

Backing up an iPhone, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a hassle. You do the job via iTunes, but it’s not a particularly intuitive experience, nor one that’s as automated as it should be. (The syncing that happens automatically when you connect an iPhone via USB falls very short of a full backup.) Unless you’re a lot more careful than I am about protecting your data, you probably don’t back up your iPhone as often as you should.

Enter Iomega’s SuperHero, which I wrote about when it was announced at CES in January. It’s an iPhone charging dock–it also works with the current version of the iPod Touch–that aims to make backup so easy that you’ll actually do it. Or contact and photo backup, at least–the SuperHero can’t protect apps, e-mail, calendars, and other items because Apple provides no way for third-party products to get at this data. Iomega provided a unit to me for review.

Continue reading this story…

Venerable storage company Iomega has made its CES announcements. They include a unique new iPhone/iPod Touch dock, two TV boxes that are the first ones to run the Boxee software since D-Link’s original Boxee Box, and Web-enabled updates to its network storage products.

Waitaminnit–what is a storage company like Iomega doing making an iPhone dock? Well, its new SuperHero is a storage device: The $69.99 gizmo packs a 4GB SD card. And when you use it with Iomega’s iPhone app, it’ll back up your contacts and photos as you charge your phone. (If you’ve got more than 4GB of stuff, you can swap out the included SD card and insert one of your own.) If you lose your data–or lose your phone, period, and get a new one–you can use the Iomega app to restore the data.

Continue reading this story…

Do you own a computer with USB 3.0 ports? Probably not. You will, though–and when you do, you’ll want USB 3.0 devices so you can take advantage of the sizable speed boost.

USB 3.0-equipped peripherals, like USB 3.0 PCs, remain somewhat exotic. But here’s some good news: Iomega is announcing that it’s going to replace all its current USB 2.1 portable hard drives with USB 3.0 models. The transition starts with new versions of the company’s 500GB and 1TB eGo drives, due in October. It says its other models will follow suit, starting in the first quarter of next year.

Iomega isn’t announcing how much the USB 3.0 drives will cost, because it’s not sure what the going rate for portable drives will be in October. But it is saying that you won’t pay a premium for the USB 3.0 models over 2.0 versions. (It currently charges $114.99 for a 500GB eGo and $189.99 for a 1TB one.) The new versions will come with AES 256 hardware encryption standard, and are rated to survive a seven-foot drop–twice the industry average, Iomega says,

USB 3.0 drives work fine with USB 2.1 ports–at 2.1 speeds–so there’s no reason not to buy a USB 3.0 drive, even if you can’t take advantage of its speed just yet.

USB 3.0 portable drives aren’t new, but they’ve been nichey products at a premium price; Iomega’s move to replace 2.1 models with 3.0 ones at similar price points is a welcome development. If Iomega can afford to make USB 3.0 standard, it seems like a good bet that Seagate (which currently sells USB 2.1 drives that can be upgraded to 3.0) and Western Digital will do the same before too many months pass.

Back in 2008, enterprise storage titan EMC bought Iomega, the venerable consumer/small-business storage provider best known for the once-ubiquitous Zip drive. Iomega still makes plenty of low-priced consumery products, but it’s been interesting to watch the EMC-owned Iomega emphasize more business-oriented network products. And never more than today: The company is announcing the StorCenter ix12-300r, a rack-mounted network storage unit with twelve bays, giving it the ability to hold up to 24TB of storage.

Continue reading this story…

Storage stalwart Iomega is carving out a niche for itself by releasing networked storage products with unexpectedly generous amounts of high-end features. Back in August, it announced the StorCenter IX4-200, a four-bay device. And now it’s been joined by the two-bay StorCenter ix2-200, available in 1TB ($269.99), 2TB ($369.99), and 4TB ($699.99) versions.

The ix2 packs Gigabit Ethernet and 3 USB ports; a feature called QuikTransfer lets you copy files from the device to an external drive by pressing a button–no PC required. It provides remote access to its contents from any Internet-connected computer, and can talk directly to up to five Axis surveillance cameras. It provides support for RAID 1 data redundancy, supports the iSCSI storage network standard, and is certified by VMware for virtualization applications.

As the above specs suggest, the device is primarily aimed at small and medium-sized business users. But it also has a bunch of features aimed at home users: It supports DLNA and iTunes for streaming of media around a home, can be used with Apple’s Time Machine feature for networked Mac backups, and can download torrents directly from the Internet. Oh, and it also has an optional Bluetooth feature that lets you wirelessly back up photos, contacts, and other information from your phone.

Iomega is also pitching the ix2-200 as an eco-friendly storage product: It’s got an Energy Star-certified power supply and automatically spins down its drives when not in use.

Unlike its predecessor, the plain old StorCenter ix2, the ix2-200 has user-replaceable hard drives, but there’s no empty bay, and the drives aren’t hot-swappable. Iomega says that the 1TB and 2TB versions are available now, and the 4TB one will show up later this month.

Interested in a couple of terabytes of networked storage? How about 4TB, or 8TB? Iomega has announced the StorCenter ix4-200D, its newest NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. It’s packed with features and aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, but I think it’ll find its way into some home-based businesses as well.

The StorCenter contains four SATA hard drives and sports two Gigabit Ethernet ports. It’s got three USB 2.0 ports for adding external drives and/or a printer, all of which are then available from the network; a feature called QuikTransfer lets you use an LCD to move files back and forth between the NAS and external drives without using a PC.

It works with Windows, OS X, and Linux PCs, comes with Retrospect backup software from parent company EMC, and is Iomega’s first business-oriented network storage device to support Apple’s Time Machine backups. It can even talk to Axis network cameras and record video from them without a PC in the equation. There are also some industrial-strength features that smallish companies are less likely to care about, including iSCSCI support and certification by VMWare for virtualization use. And even though it’s aimed at businessy use, it supports DLNA for streaming of video and audio across a network directly from its drives.

The 2TB version of the StorCenter is competitively priced at $699.99; the 4TB provides double the disk space for $899.99; the 8TB uses still-costly 2TB drives and is $1899.99. (Unlike some storage products with multiple bays, it doesn’t offer any free bays in any of its configurations.) All three versions come with a three-year warranty, and Iomega says they’re shipping now.

How’s your Monday so far?

Napster launches a $5 service.

What’s with the oldest Twitterer?

Iomega updates external hard drives.

Microsoft patents the magic wand.

Windows 7′s virtual Wi-Fi adapters.

Walmart ramps up electronics sections.

Firefox 3.5 due in June.

Trying to buy Verizon’s MiFi,

RealDVD headed for legal oblivion?