Conclusion – Good product, High Price

Imation’s Odyssey backup solution is an attractive product for the backup tasks necessary in a SOHO environment. Home users, on the other hand, are likely to be put off by the comparatively high purchase price of €370 for the docking station and one 120 GB cartridge. Additional 120 GB cartridges, which will be needed sooner rather than later if you are conscientious about your backups, will set you back another €180 apiece. In light of the current prices for hard drives (120 GB 2.5” HDD for €60), that is far too much in our opinion. Of course, the great advantage of the cartridge-based solution is that the drives are shock proof, can withstand electrostatic discharges, and offer a good transfer rate both when reading and writing thanks to the 2.5” hard drives they use.

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However, despite the good overall impression, we can’t help but notice some downsides as well. Should the docking station ever suffer a failure, you are forced to buy another Imation Odyssey docking station in order to access the files backed up on the cartridges. To be fair, the unit is put together solidly and should endure countless cartridge changes. On the whole, the Odyssey backup solution is very simple to use. If you feel more comfortable backing up your files by hand without using complex backup software, you can always just use the Windows Explorer. However, the slightly unexpected behaviour of the docking station in refusing to eject the cartridge when the USB connection was interrupted seems more than a little strange to us.