No one has yet challenged the stated speed of the SparQ from the SYQT web site syquest.com
Ideal Performance for data intensive applications. Seek time 12ms. Delivers EIDE burst rates of up to 16.6MB/sec. (PIO mode 4) and data transfer rates from 3.7 to 6.9MB/sec. Parallel Port design sustained transfer rate is approximately 1.25MB/sec. with a burst rate of 2.0MB/sec.. Parallel Port performance varies with your processor speed. Application performance supported with a 512K intelligent caching buffer.
In your dreams, SYQT.
In reality, the burst rate will be something like 3.7 to 6.9MB/sec. 16.6MB/sec is the absolute fastest PIO Mode 4 allows. NO ONE HAS EVER ACHIEVED IT OR ANYTHING CLOSE TO IT (for technical reasons beyond the scope of this post.) Read any HD review in any PC mag if you don't believe me.
A real life example: 196MB in 80 seconds equals ~ 2.5 MB/sec. That's what I get copying from a 1-month-old WDC 6.4 GB UDMA MODE 2 HD to a 7-month old WDC 2.5 GB PIO Mode 4 HD using a 1-month-old Cyrix PR200+ with a 1-month-old UDMA mobo and Intel's TX chipset and Win 95 OSR2. That's the fastest sustained rate I have measured, and I get the same results in my informal tests and in WinBench 97 disk benchmarks. SparQ won't be able to touch it. I doubt it will even get close to 2 MB/sec from the IDE version (or SCSI if they ever make it) and 1/10th that off the PP version.
Faster than Zip, certainly the IDE version will be. Than Jaz? We'll see.
Reliable? User friendly? Again, we'll see.
If I ever see one in the stores for $200 + $100/3disks, I'll buy it, benchmark it, and report the results here. But if they don't come close to their stated minimum transfer rate of 3.7 MB/sec, I'll take it back. If they just meet that minimum sustained number (copying > 100MB), I'll sell all my IOM stock and IOM hardware.
Rocky, in your post you said:
< I am going to CompUSA this week to order a SparQ 1 Gigabyte drive for $199. Bye-bye Iomega.>
Way to go! Don't wait for the reviews, the media or even the drive to be actually available, just go plunk your money down on a web page and marketing spec sheet. |
