Re: Jaz's Problems Continued
While your reading the link provided by Mr. Drumond feel free to read this bit of literature provided by:
bib.nl
(you'll have to scroll down a bit if you want to find this particular subject)
This thread deals with using the Jaz with a Roland VS-880, which is a stand-alone 8- track digital audio multitrack recorder.
-Iomega Jaz Drive.
[Ed. - April '97] Among the most popular subjects on the VS-880 Mailing List 'Jaz Drive Problems' certainly ranks high. The
press almost unanimously applauded the Iomega Jaz Drive when it appeared on the market in the beginning of 1996.
Unfortunately, out of the testlabs and into the real world, the Jaz Drive was less successful. While reading through all of the
messages of the VS-880 Mailing List I was amazed at the amount of people who had BIG trouble with the Jaz Drive and/or its
cartridges. First it appeared the problems only occurred with the version of the VS-880 containing an internal Jaz Drive. Indeed,
Roland discontinued this particular model last year. Later it was clear the external version of the Jaz Drive suffered equally from
these problems. The Jaz Drive causing media errors, data loss, unformattable cartridges - again and again these reports were
posted. To be fair: for every two (2) people who report problems with their Jaz Drive, there is one (1) message that tells us
about 'no problems yet'.
"What did you hear about Jaz drives!? I use a Jaz drive as my recording drive and I haven't had any problems so far (fingers
crossed)." [Sherif - Oct '96]
"A while back i said I'd had no problems with my Jaz drive. And now I'm pissed off. My external Jaz drive just crashed on me
- the disk is stuck inside the unit and won't eject out, it seems as if the drive is in a perpetual spin. I have 2 songs on
it....yeah...." [Sherif - Nov '96]
"I noticed that after about 6 months of INTENSIVE use on my Mac, all my Jaz carts die the same way..... gets stuck, refuses
to read, destroys files, corrupts the desktop etc. The only way to fix it was making a safety onto a new cart. Even re-formatting
didn't fix the problems! Remember.... Iomega has a WARENTE stating that the carts are good for a period of time.... make
them live up to it!" [Steven McLoughlin - Nov '96]
"I'm just one guy, but I have a Jaz drive that was built in August '96, three carts from the same era, I use them HARD, in real
time, and I've had ZERO problems, period. My 880 came with the internal 540. I intended to use this for R/P and simply
archive to the Jaz, and I did this for a while, but one day I wanted to start a new song quickly, didn't have room on the internal,
and didn't want to take the time to move something off the 540, so I just started the project on the external Jaz. Worked great! I
almost always use 44.1 khz sample rate, MT1 mode, use all eight tracks, with several of these having V-tracks, and I've never
had even a little hiccup. I have heard rumors that early Jaz drives were flaky, that some carts are bogus, and that cheap SCSI
cables are often unreliable, but I've seen no evidence of this. BTW, my 880 is Rev 1.05 OS, and I move the Jaz from the 880
to two PC's with Adaptec SCSI (2940) cards for backups once per week. Of course, I use different carts for this purpose, but
I've never had a problem with using the Jaz for PC backups either." [Doug Semon - Nov '96]
"I use my Jaz drive with both the VS-880 and a Macintosh. After months of thinking 'isn't this Jaz thing great?' things began to
go horribly wrong. Both on the discs I used for the VS and the Mac. The Mac cartridges I only used for back-ups, the ones for
the VS mainly too but I have done some recording on them too (but not a lot because they're so noisy). The problems started
with the Jaz drive taking an awful lot of time to find a certain file, making all sorts of not-so-funny noises. Later I got several
media failures and now I have about three cartridges I can't even format anymore. Unfortunately my story is pretty normal. I
have read several accounts (on this list and the Logic list) on how the Jaz drive and its cartridges worked beautifully in the
beginning and then suddenly began to develop severe problems. This is very deceiving as they're also people who love their Jaz
drive (I did before I got these problems!) and, of course, write about it. There's even a positive review of the Jaz drive in the
new Sound On Sound! It makes no mention of potential unreliability at all. Which I think is not an example of 'informed
journalism'. People will go out and buy it because they've read this review in the SOS. In short: people who have had no
problems with the Jaz drive are lucky - it is VERY unreliable most of the times. Iomega should get their act together and do
something about it, a lot of people have spend a lot of money on a product they cannot trust (which is very worrying for a
BACK-UP medium)." [Daniel Baars - Jan '97]
"I use an external Iomega Jaz, and haven't had any problems in the 6 or 7 months I've owned it. Expensive but fast,
confirmable, even portable." [Doug - Jan '97]
"I had precisely the same problem with my unit, besides other Jaz problems. Not at first mind you, about a hundred hours into
it. I talked to higher ups at Roland and they took my Jaz unit back - acknowledging unfixable problems with the Jaz platform -
and replaced it with an internal hard drive. The Jaz is a very handy platform but to all of you who have had no problem so far
with it, count your blessings and be sure you do triple back-ups. Fair warning." [R.C. - Jan '97]
"I've been using my Jaz for some six months now with my PC as a second harddisk. I have some 12 disks for different
projects etc. One of the disks, I use daily. I run programs from it, not just storing data on it. No media errors or any other
(yet)." [Matz Bjurstroem - Jan '97]
"All of us Jaz and Jaz-ex owners have been at this point at some time or another, right? There it is, the drive is new, it's
spinning, we're recording, it feels cool to handle this big 1 giga monster, we think of all the possibilities, we have a boner,
we're jazzed! We hear the "rumors"... and we think, nah! They're just rumors... my Jaz will never fail because I have a special
bond with it! So we keep on going... in our own little Iomega fantasy world (and while we're at it, we consider writing them
mushy love letters and wish lists)... then suddenly, everything turns into the Twilight Zone" [George Carden - Jan '97] |
