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Non-Tech : Any info about Iomega (IOM)? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rocky Reid who wrote (51941)	4/4/1998 1:07:00 PM
From: FuzzFace	Respond to of 58324

Rocky, I you read half as much as you write, you'd see I am not trying to steer her into any purchase, Jaz or otherwise. I want her to wait and evaluate objectively after Orb is out and reviewed. Then weigh her requirements with each medium's strengths and weaknesses. And you'd also see how for many, SparQ seems to have a "lossy" data compression algorithm, only without the compression. A statement like: "The Castlewood Orb's MR tech should prove very reliable." is not much more than wishful thinking. There are too many variables. You must stop falling in love with vapor and start taking a wait and see attitude on new products.

To: Rocky Reid who wrote (51941)	4/4/1998 1:26:00 PM
From: Philip J. Davis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 58324

Rocky, Check out these mostly glowing reviews of SyQuest SparQ: heise.de <<The drive mechanism did convey a bad feeling to us when inserting the disk. << >>After having manually installed the drivers the device for the moment worked satisfactorily and with an acceptable speed for a parallel port. But on the second day already several damaged sectors were found which interfered with the H2bench measurements. Although we were able to repair the defects performing a low level formatting with the utility software, which took us some hours, our confidence in the drive was shaken.<< >>There are some OS/2 drivers in a well hidden directory on the SparQ disk, which however caused our computer to crash.<< >>This version logs on via the EIDE interface like a hard disk. According to the manual it actually has to be registered as such in the BIOS setup. The consequences are already known from the IDE Zip drive: Is a storage medium already inserted in the computer during start up the primary partition of the medium is assigned the drive letter D: which can not be changed in Windows 95. When starting with an empty drive it is placed behind the hard disk partitions. Because of these characteristics and the risk of data loss when changing the medium without using appropriate drivers, SyQuest should have better offered SparQ as an ATAPI drive.<< >>Result The poor software quality possibly will be improved by the European SparQ version being launched in March. What carries much more weight is the fact that already after two days of testing the EIDE drive showed read errors on the cartridge belonging to the kit. Considering these hard- and software defects we cannot recommend the SparQ drive for safeguarding data.<< Here's more... currents.net >>But how cheap is too cheap? I'm afraid SyQuest cut too many corners on the SparQ. I encountered quite a few design and installation problems, especially in the EIDE version. And I wasn't alone. A visit to the alt.syquest newsgroup revealed that other SparQ users got singed, too. SyQuest seems to be engaged in an ongoing effort to control the SparQ's problems, but no one enjoys being an unwitting beta tester, especially when it comes to storage devices.<< >>Unfortunately, the first unit I received had problems seating and ejecting cartridges. SyQuest replaced the drive, saying it was from an early batch and the design had since been improved.<< >>Unfortunately, the internal EIDE version of the SparQ gave me no end of trouble. It can fit in a 3.5-inch drive bay or in a 5.25-inch bay with the supplied mounting bracket. The bracket is plastic, however, and I had to apply way too much force to fasten the screws. Then I discovered that unless I recessed the drive slightly in the drive bay, the thin upper lid of the cartridge would catch on the even thinner upper edge of the SparQ drive's opening. Someone in a bad mood (like me, at this point) could ruin a cartridge by forcing it. The internal EIDE SparQ also had problems seating and ejecting cartridges, and worse, the door broke after only four or five uses.<< >>Although it wasn't necessarily the SparQ's fault, the drive wouldn't play slave to my Maxtor 87000D8 hard drive's master, so I had to install it on the secondary IDE channel. Then Windows 95 refused to recognize it unless a cartridge was inserted. This set off a game of musical drive letters: boot with a cartridge in, and all drive letters shift up. Boot without one, and they shift down again. SyQuest offers a work-around, but for someone like me, who has multiple drive letters including a multipartitioned hard drive, it was intolerable.<< >>The EIDE drive was much faster and better at multitasking than its external sibling. However, it couldn't touch a SyJet or Jaz drive.<< >>The SparQ's quality and installation problems dampened my enthusiasm for the product, inexpensive though it is. I can't recommend the internal EIDE version at all. Only buy the parallel port version if you want cheap, removable storage and are willing to risk reliability. But don't buy either if you need speed.<< Philip