IOMega taking pre-orders on 70GB REV drive

Portable storage is constantly evolving. We thought we saw the death of the conventional floppy disc when IOMega came along with their — what seemed at the time — massive capacity ZIP drives. Little did we know that CD and DVD burners were on their way, followed by USB thumb drives and the like. Not content to sit in the shadows any longer, IOMega is busting back on the scene with their all new 70GB USB 2.0 Drive with REV technology.

Available for pre-order as of, well, right now, the “super durable disks” go eight times the speed of normal tape. Furthermore, making use of the included EMC Retrospect Express backup software, you can compress your files and effectively shove up to 140 GB of data onto a single disk.

Spinning around at 4200rpm, the successor to the now aged ZIP drive starts up in 22 seconds, stops in 6 seconds, has a latency time of 7.1ms, and has a typical transfer rate of between 15 and 30 MB per second. Burst transfer rates are as fast as 100 MB per second.

The drive itself will set you back nearly $600, with the 70GB REV disks going for $69 a pop (four packs will also be available for $249).