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Zip Drives Enough is enough already with these Zip Drives. Okay, they're neat, and better than floppies, but they're not backup! Stop trying to promote and use them as such. They are simply a better floppy--use them like that. They are not reliable, they are not fast, they are not big, they are not sturdy, they are not standard, they are not bootable (yet), and they are NOT CHEAP! Anyone ever sit down and think about it? It costs you about $0.15 per megabyte. That's not including the hardware to use the disks. You wouldn't pay that much for a hard drive, so why pay that much for a floppy? A hard drive costs less than 10 cents per megabyte. The two problems with using a hard drive is that it is not easily removable and it has a large capacity. You can't get a 200 MB drive for $20--that doesn't happen. But you'd be better off buying a 1.6 GB drive to backup your 1.6 GB drive instead of buying 15 or so Zip disks (which would cost you around $200 at bulk rate). The hard drive is faster, more reliable, cheaper, and easier to deal with. No drivers are required, it's bootable, and you don't need special software to backup or restore. I don't know how much I can stress this point. People have been so swept away by the marketing and product lust for this new gadget that they've overlooked any problems it has. Yeah, I'm sick of floppies, but I hardly use them. When I transfer with people it's usually over modem or LAN. If need be I'll use a floppy, and it would be great if I could use something better than a floppy; but Zip doesn't cut it for me. What I'd like is a Magneto Optical drive, otherwise known as an MO. There are a couple of advantages these have over a Zip Drive, and a couple of disadvantages. The biggest pluses for me are that they are nearly indestructible and they will hold your data for over 20 years. I bet you didn't know that about Zips--they're mortal. They will start to lose your data in about 3 years. I know what you're thinking: "But I won't use the stuff I have now in 3 years." You know what, though? You will. One day, years from now, you'll need that little picture that you got from someone, or that incriminating e-mail that was sent to you, or that paper you wrote and need to show again, or that app that you got but haven't used in so long that would fit the job exactly now. You reach for your "trusty" Zip disk, wipe the dust off it, power up your drive (assuming you've replaced it with something better), and stick in the disk . . . only to find that everything on it is corrupt and all you get is "Cannot read data" or "Sector not found" or "Seek error." You thought those days were long gone with floppies. Guess what? The Zip disk is JUST ANOTHER FLOPPY. You don't believe me? Pull back that little metal protector (which, incidentally, reminds me A LOT of the 3.5" floppy disk) and look at the media. Lo and behold, it's a floppy--brown powder on a mylar disk, just like that 3.5" floppy. Yeah, this is a bit thicker, this is a bit smoother, but essentially that's all it is. And the problem with all magnetic media is that it will loose its flux in about 3 years. So all those precious backups you have? They're gone. You think that maybe the older backups on tape are safe, but alas, those too are magnetic media and have also lost much of their contents. This would have never happened if you'd used an MO! Or even a writable CD (but there are problems with that, too). Now the problems with MOs are pretty apparent. They are EXPENSIVE. And they've been like that for YEARS. I was hoping that with the Zip Drive becoming so popular and the CD writers becoming so cheap, the MO manufacturers would bring down the prices some but they haven't dropped much at all. On the plus side, however, there are many flavors of MOs starting at about 230 MB and going to 4.6 GB. The smaller ones, I'm afraid, are very expensive--in the vicinity of $330 for the drive and about $20 for a cartridge. The larger ones give you more bang for the buck: the 4.6 GB is about $1,500 and cartridges are about $120. So, you get two 2.3 GB hard drives for $1,500 and another two 2.3 GB drives for $120. Once you've bought the second cartridge, you've spent an equal amount on this drive as a 9 GB hard drive. Anything after that makes it cheaper and cheaper. These are also much faster than the Zip Drives. They are comparable to a regular hard drive on reads--the 4.6 GB Pinnacle micro has an access time of about 15 ms. But due to technical difficulties they write significantly slower. The platter needs to spin twice for it to write one thing because of the method of writing involved. What happens is the laser heats the media on one pass and the head changes the phase on the second. Pinnacle micro tried to overcome this by putting both parts of the head close enough together so that it could happen at once, but so far that's been unsuccessful. And remember that these cartridges are durable and reliable. They will last about 20 years on the shelf. Some manufacturers claim more but I like to keep things on the safe side. On the other hand, if you're buying the Zip Drive because you have more than 1.4 MB but less than 100 MB of stuff you need to transfer to your friends and colleagues who already have Zip Drives, it's probably the right thing for you. But please, spend a bit extra and get the SCSI version, unless you're using the drive as a removable drive to bring your data to people. If you've bought the internal drive, you're not doing this, so please make it SCSI. You’ll be much happier with its speed. Home | Welcome
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