Iomega Hard Drive Lets Your Media Play

— -- Hard drives with a focus on home media are not new. But they do keep getting easier to use, and more plentiful. Iomega's newest entry is the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive, which lets you share photos, videos, and music across your home network. The drive is being shown at Macworld today, and will be on display at CES later this week. It will be available later this month in 500GB ($160) and 1TB ($230) versions.

Right from the get-go, this drive's name makes it clear that this storage device has a multimedia focus. The centerpiece of the Home Media Network Hard Drive is the LifeLine Home software from EMC--Iomega's new parent company. LifeLine Home has a three-step process for setup, which--together with the drive's integrated Linux-based software suite--helps guide you through both the installation and use of the drive to stream multimedia to your PC, game console, iTunes, or even digital photo frame.

The drive also comes with EMC Retrospect Express so you can back up multiple PCs to it. It also supports Universal Plug and Play and is Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) compliant. And, like many of the drives on our Top 5 Network-attached Storage chart, it connects to your network via gigabit ethernet, and also has a USB port to add additional storage or a printer.