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Non-Tech : Iomega Thread without Iomega -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Stempson who wrote (4935)	12/8/1998 12:42:00 AM
From: Philip J. Davis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10072

In case somebody missed it, here's an interesting post concerning HiFD from NovW at the Motley Fool board: boards.fool.com His test results: boards.fool.com >>Subject: PP HiFD On CompUSA Shelf-Seems 'Harmless' Number: 13608 of 13823 Author: NovW Date: 11/30/98 1:38 AM Like I posted on 11/21/98 and 11/22/98 that I saw the USB Zip on CompUSA shelf, I am now saying the same about the PP HiFD. That is right ... I was holding a PP HiFD in my hands .... I don't know if that was the first one, the only one or the last one at that CompUSA store. Couple things about the Specifications printed on the HiFD box that caught my attention: Transfer Speed: 600kB/s max. I think the Transfer Speed depends on the computer system and the PP port capability. The PP HiFD 200 should be faster than a PP Zip 100 and that is expected. However, it may be likely that the Transfer Speed of a USB Zip could be about the same as or even faster than that of a PP HiFD. Don't really know yet. Average Seek Time: 49ms I think the Average Seek Time may be independent of the interfaces. HiFD's 49ms Average Seek Time seems to be slow and could prabably mean that HiFD wouldn't perform so well on OPERATIONS with random seeks (but not necessarily on sequential write and read). I remember Zip's Average Seek Time is about 29ms. I am surprised that HiFD's Average Seek Time spec is so slow. Was this Average Seek Time Spec published before? The PP HiFD is priced at $199.99 as announced previously. My opinion at this point is: PP HiFD doesn't seem to be too much of a threat ..... ... more later. Just a lay stockholder's humble opinions. As "usaul", I may be wrong. NovW<< Test Results: >>PP HiFD Drive Underperforms A Regular $13* Floppy Drive On 1.44MB Disks? (*$13 may be the OEM cost of a brand new regular floppy drive) I got my hands on a PP HiFD drive .... I had some trouble installing the HiFD driver. I will go over the details about that later if I have time. Let me get to the more important part of my observations directly now. Of course, unlike the professional reviewers, this humble lay person went to test the most highly touted HiFD feature first: the 1.44MB operations. I believe in First thing First. ;-) I used a 300Mhz AMD K6 -2 Windows98 PC to do the testing. HiFD Regular Floppy Drive 1.44MB Disk Format under DOS 58 Sec 40 Sec Windows98 Full Format 2 Min 30 Sec 1 Min 50 Sec One 1.26MB Graphic File Write 1 Min 25 Sec 56 Sec Read (Open) 2 Min 45 Sec Please note that this lay person didn't note or try to use any particular system configurations during the above tests. I tried to compare things under what appeared to be "normal" operating conditions to me, meaning I didn't try to do anything special - I only performed the tests as I normally would use the computer to get those tasks done. However, I think I was smart enough trying to keep most of the cache effects out of the tests. I am not 100% sure that I didn't make any mistakes though. I was pretty sure about the Format and Write parts. I like to retest the Read (Open) part if I have more time. Just a lay stockholder's humble opinions. As "usaul", I may be wrong. NovW<< Philip