Iomega ships Leopard-prepped external drives

Iomega this morning revealed that it had just begun shipping a new range of drives catering to Mac users and ideally matched with Mac OS X Leopard's Time Machine backup feature. The MiniMax as well as the UltraMax and UltraMax Pro drives all come pre-formatted with the HFS+ file system, allowing Leopard to instantly recognize them and use them as Time Machine drives without converting from a Windows file system like FAT32. All the drives are designed to fit in alongside modern Macs, with the MiniMax stacking underneath a Mac mini and the UltraMax line designed to resemble the Mac Pro and PowerMac G5 towers.

The MiniMax is designed to extend the Mac mini and starts at $180 for 500GB of storage as well as a three-port USB hub; a $200 model adds three FireWire ports, while a $320 model increases storage to 750GB. Moving to the standard UltraMax starts at 500GB for $190 but includes single USB and FireWire connections; premium 500GB ($220) and 750GB ($320) versions add external SATA and dual FireWire 800 ports to provide the maximum speed possible for internal storage without consuming extra USB ports.

Topping the series, the larger UltraMax Pro is based around dual drives that create 1.5TB of space in a RAID stripe but can be set to a RAID mirror for a redundant 750GB backup. It drops eSATA but keeps dual FireWire 800, single FireWire 400, and single USB ports. The Pro is the only UltraMax drive also available as a FAT32 drive and sells in either form for $600. All the drives should be available today.