James Fraser wrote: > I'm feeling the need to back up my box (PM 9600/4 gig drive) pretty > acutely [bites nails]. What I'm wondering is: are Jaz disks a > worthwhile (meaning fairly dependable) media to use for backups or not? > I'm specifically looking at the 2 gig carts, but I guess I can use the 1 > gig carts lying around here, too, if need be.
FYI, here's what <http://pw2.netcom.com/~deepone/zipjaz/special.html#macdisks > says about Jaz drive 2gb/1gb compatibility: How compatible are 250/100 Zip drives or 2GB/1GB Jaz drives? For the purposes of this discussion, we'll call the 100MB Zip and the 1GB Jaz "old", and we'll call the 250MB Zip and the 2GB Jaz "new". The compatibility issues are the same for the Zip and the Jaz drives. The new disks won't work in the old drives at all. Don't even try it. The old disks can be used in the new drives. When reading from an old disk in a new drive, performance should be about the same as reading the old disk in an old drive (which is not quite as fast as reading a new disk in a new drive). However, when writing to an old disk in a new drive, performance will suffer greatly. The read/write heads on a new drive are much smaller than they are on an old drive, so the new drive has to make several passes (about 4, I think) to fill out the wider tracks on the old disks. I suspect this could negatively impact the drive's ability to detect bad sectors, and that may be why the new drives are unable to long format the old disks. For this reason, I would not recommend a new drive to anyone who plans to use it to write to old disks on a regular basis. > I know that there's some serious hand-wringing on this forum over Zip > disks from time to time ("I think I lost my data, help!"). Me being me, > I'm not sure if this means that Zip disks were pieces of poo from the > very beginning, or if the people having the problems are expecting too > much from old drives and media with a limited life expectancy. I'd like > to think that whatever problems there were with Zips were not passed on > to the Jaz family of products and that Iomega learned from any mistakes > they made the first time around. > > NB: Yes, I _am_ one of those "wishful thinking"-types! > > I ask this because I hate having stuff lying around that's not being > used. This list has pounded the aphorism "waste not, want not" into my > (thick) (okay, REALLY thick) skull pretty forcefully. Any tales (good > or bad) you guys could share would be greatly appreciated. Well I have several 100mb zip drives and several 1gb Jaz drives(all Iomega external SCSI). The zip I bought new worked for several years, and was replaced with a refurbished one from Iomega following Click of Death problem. Only two of the four Jaz drives I have gotten used work reliably. In my experience with buying used zip/Jaz drives, some work really well but some are kind of flakey. I have had disks on both become unreadable for unexplained reasons after a while, but generally they hold up. I would recommend using them for both transferring files from computer to computer, or short-term storage. Generally I back up daily to both zip and Jaz, then burn CD once a month or so, just to be sure(as well as having the data on other computers). If they are irreplaceable files, I suggest not depending on just one medium for backup. Check out Coping With Zip And Jaz Drives - General Usage Tips: <http://pw2.netcom.com/~deepone/zipjaz/general.html> Saul Broudy -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
