Western Digital has been in the drive biz for a long time and they do it well.
I have WD drives in all my computers and (knock on wood) never had a disk
failure. If you can break down and reassemble an OM-1, you can install a WD
drive :). They are not the fastest, or highest capacity, just good equipment
at a fair price.
John P
______________________________________
there is no "never" - just long periods of "not yet".
there is no "always" - just long periods of "so far"
-----Original Message-----
From: John Hermanson <omtech@xxxxxxxxx>
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, November 30, 1998 3:33 PM
Subject: Re: [OM] Re: Syquest Sparq
Wow! Thank you for all "dat" info. Maybe I'll just upgrade my hard
drive. Jees, 10.0 gig Western Digital for $259 or something like that and I've
read that Western is one of the easiest to install & get running. Now someone
can answer this and tell me how bad Western Digital is! ;-)
John
Dave Haynie wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 1998 11:52:18 -0500, John Hermanson <omtech@xxxxxxxxx>
jammed all night, and by sunrise was overheard remarking:
> The Syquest Sparq (1 gig backup disc system)
DANGER! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!
> recently went on sale at local
> office supply stores for $49 (!) Down from the original price of
$199.
Ouch! I bought one at $199 or thereabouts. This isn't really a backup
disc (well, folks do use them for backup, but it's among the most
expensive forms; tape and CD-R are each much cheaper), really just a
cartridge hard drive; you replace the cartridge, the heads stay with
the
drive, like a CD or a floppy. It's nearly as fast as a standard EIDE
drive, and actually has special media streaming modes that make it
faster than the best EIDE of only a little while ago. It's essentially
the same drive technology as the SyJet, only with a more advanced media
(one platter, versus two for the SyJet, hence the lower prices).
> Has anyone heard if Syquest has been bought out by Iomega or Imation?
Nope. Last I heard, SyQuest is in dire straights, considering or having
files chaper 11 or some-such. Check out this one:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,28223,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh
That's a little old, I suspect they're already in bankruptcy, but I
don't have a pointer to it.
Sadly, a quick perusal of a SparQ support list at
http://www.juip.com/sparqboard/sparqboard.html
shows that, if not most, quite a few SparQ users have found their
drives
just up and die. It's also true that, several months after I got my
drive (lured in by the "3GB for $99" deal), they raised the price of
the
discs, so now it's more like 2GB for $99. As it turns out, I don't have
enough invested in SparQ now to go any further with it, and while mine
still works, I would be worried to use it with the chance of failure
apparently so high and SyQuest apparently approaching defunctdom.
You're better off with something else. The main reason I didn't use my
SparQ much is that, with HD's so cheap anyway, I haven't recently had a
disc crunch (though I haven't had much time for music, which is where I
get the disc crunch -- digital photography hurts for awhile, but I
usually dump cleaned-up scans out to CD-R). Meanwhile, for data
exchange,
it's email or ZIP, since everyone has a ZIP. IoMega apparently plans a
new ZIP for next year, which supports 250MB ($15.95 per disc) but also
reads the 100MB format. ZIP has been very reliable in my system, though
not fast enough for anything but archivals.
And there are others. It's almost crazy:
- Olympus and others back the ISO standard MO (magneto-optical)
discs, little floppy sized 3.5" discs. These, being optically
based, are (like CDs) immune to magnetic or x-ray radiation,
and
they're generally more rugged than mechanical discs. You get
120MB or 230MB per disc, at near-hard-drive speeds. See
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cgi-bin/section.cgi?name=storage&product=SYS_230
- SuperDrive, aka LS-120, this Imation thing which delivers a
super floppy with 120MB per disc, with standard 1.44MB support
as well. LS means laser-servo, these are optically positioned
with magnetic read/write heads. This is something of an
emerging
standard, though ZIP is still more popular. These are faster
than floppies (you need that, obviously, for the size), but
slower than ZIPs.
- Sony 200MB floppy, coming Real Soon Now, is basically the
same
idea as LS-120: it reads your old discs, works big with new
technology discs. It's not compatible with LS-120, of course.
- CD-R/CD-RW. Everyone should know what this is. You get 660MB
or so per disc; CD-RW discs are heading down to under $20 price
points, CD-Rs (write-once) are nearing the "cheap as sand"
category. Like CDs, they're not especially fast; in fact, the
heavier heads on CD-R/RW drives make those drives much slower
than modern CD-ROM drives. CD-Rs play in many CD-ROM and
DVD-ROM
players, the formats are all standardized, etc.
- DVD-RAM, etc. This is the rewritable format of DVD, which you
would love, since it does 2.5GB or more per disc.
Unfortunately,
you'd have to sell off a few Zuikos to afford one, still pricey
but
dropping. And while DVD-ROM and DVD-R formats are stabalized
there
are still a handful of rewriteable DVD formats (DVD-RAM,
DVD-RW,
etc), each as incompatible as the next. Basically, the dust
hasn't
settled here yet.
--
Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, Met@box Infonet, AG |
http://www.metabox.de
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