Using the REV Drive (cont'd)

Besides using the REV drive for your basic backup needs, you can also use the REV disk as any normal removable storage disk, much like a ZIP or a Jaz disk. However, one should note that when the REV disk is formatted, it's not in the typical Windows FAT32 or NTFS format, but rather, its own proprietary REV UDF format. UDF is know as Universal Disk Format and it's a format designed for optical media, mainly for ease of data interchange and portability. Targeted at erasable media, UDF is a packet writing technology that lets the system read, write and modify data stored in the media. The only difference that separates UDF from other formats is its lack of a TOC (table of contents).

Since the Iomega REV depends on its own REV UDF format, which closely resembles the UDF packet writing format, certain optical burning software are known to cause problems with the REV. In certain cases, the severity of the problem can even cause blue screen errors. Fortunately, Iomega has most of these problems resolved and workarounds posted in their support site. Most of these issues could be solved with just a simple software update. However, we won't blame you if you're uncomfortable with the fact that such software conflicts do exist and resolving them may take you anywhere between a few minutes to many hours - depending on the complexity. If you want your REV experience to be problem-free, we recommend using it in an optical writer-free environment, or at least in a system without any packet writing software installed.

For those who frequently interchange data between the Macintosh and the PC, you should note that the REV running on the Macintosh is based on a different format altogether. Disks formatted on the Macintosh employs the HFS+ format and it cannot be used on the PC. Likewise, REV UDF disks from the PC will not be readable on the Macintosh. This wouldn't have been a problem if Iomega had adopted a more friendly FAT32 file format for the REV. We feel that this is one of REV's biggest letdown.

Formatted capacity of the REV disk is approximately 32.5GB. Note that the file format for REV is UDF.

Iomega's explorer-integrated disk format utility lets you create a bootable REV disk simply by including a bootable Windows or Linux ISO image.

Provided with the drive, you'll also find Symantec's Norton Ghost built specially for the Iomega REV drive. As we all should know by now, Ghost is a disaster recovery software that images an entire hard drive. As such, everything in the hard drive will be duplicated, including the operating system, application software and data. If you frequently make an image of your critical system's hard drive into the REV disk, you can be assured that recovery will be swift should the system's main boot drive fails.

The bundled Norton Ghost for REV drive software CD.