Iomega’s Dinky Little Helium Hard Drive Is A Great MacBook Companion [Review]

Iomega’s new Helium Portable Hard Drive is a compact little brick of data storage. Encased in a hard aluminum shell, the Helium Drive is perfect for Time Machine backups or supplementing the memory of a MacBook Air.

Whatever it’s used for, the data will always be safe, even if the drive is lost or stolen. The Helium has built-in hardware encryption, which means no one can ever peek at your files. That also makes it a good place to stash files you don’t want anyone to see…

The Good:

The Iomega Helium Portable Hard Drive is designed for MacBooks, period. The durable aluminum case complements Apple’s portables, and it has the same plug-and-play simplicity. The Helium is bus powered (no power brick) and it takes just a few clicks to set up a strong password that encrypts everything you put on it. Encryption is AES 256-bit, and everything’s done in hardware, so there’s no performance hit.

The Helium is great for MacBook Air users who need a way to supplement the machine’s limited Flash storage. Load it with your iTunes library or photos and movies. It’s also good for Time Machine backups. In OS X Lion, the Time Machine dialog pops up as soon as any new drive is plugged in, making backup a breeze to set up.

The Helium drive comes in two sizes:

• 500 GBytes for $99
• 1 TB for $149

I’ve been testing the 1TB drive, which has performed like a champ. It’s the Time Machine target for my 13-inch MacBook Air, and I use to store a few HD movies. Password set up is easy: download the Iomega Encryption Utility and once set, the drive can’t be accessed on other machines — it won’t even mount on another computer, making it practically invisible.

The drive is lightweight and portable, but strong and well-made. It fits easily in my bag or pocket. It has a 36-inch drop spec. It should easily survive a fall from a coffee shop table. Nonetheless, Iomega provides a generous warranty — 3 years if you register.

The Bad:

The only downside is that it’s not Thunderbolt, Apple’s new super high-speed connection standard. Still, in most use cases the USB 2 connection is perfectly adequate. Even a multi-gigabyte Time Machine backup concludes in 30 to 40 minutes.

Verdict:

Small, compact and well-made, the Helium drive is a great addition to your MacBook, especially for backups. You are back in cup backing up, right?

[xrr rating=90%]

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.

Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.

He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.

Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.

Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.

Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.

Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.

Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.

Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.

He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.

Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.

You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.