OFF-TOPIC: Cartridge hard drives [was Re: Backup]

[yesss@xxxxxxxx]

	The difference between a real hard drive and a
	"removable hard drive cartridge" (such as Jaz, Syquest,
	Orb) is that the real hard drive is extremely effectively
	sealed against the environment; the cartridge is not. I know
	of installations where the cartridge failure rate is 50%,
		 			--Bill Troop

Hi, Bill. NYC PC retailers still are as scsi-oblivious
as when I had to buy my first Syquest drive at an
Amiga counter. Its 88mb Syq cartridges had epidemic
bad clusters that I now know resulted from disks that
--absent Syquest dos tools in that Amiga package,
bought long before I had a modem--I innocently FDISK'd.

Otherwise, in all-day-every-day use over a decade
in a dusty, smoky, inhospitable environment for
precision electronic equipment, made worse by
subway rumbling and tunnel traffic particulates
large and small, I've never had *any* problem
with *any* other Syquest or Orb cartridge.

When encountering a 50 per cent failure rate, might
you be jumping to a conclusion in assuming the only
possible explanation is cartridges' down 'n' dirty
design? Countless variables are in play. People may--
often unknowingly, as I did--misuse cartridges or
drives in random ways. Users can do a lot of bad
things to equipment and don't always tell--or even
know--the truth about what they did. Small objects
bring out the bully in some users. Defragging some
Iomega carts with Norton Utilities used to be deadly.
Who manufactured the drives? You can lump together
all monitors, but a 21" CRT *is* different from a
10.4" LCD, and cartridge drives aren't all the same
either. Jaz, Orb, and Syquest drives are (or were)
manufactured by unrelated companies (Syquest stopped
production in '98) that use diverse technologies.

Cartridges' physical structure is far from the
only explanation for cartridge drive failure and
an inexplicable extraordinary run of good luck
could hardly account for years of troublefree
cartridge experience, cart after cart after cart:

	although there are fortunate people who never
	seem to have a problem.

Or, instead of relying on fickle fortune, possibly
these people rtfm, use compatible disk utils,
store cartridges in their cases when not in use,
and don't use carts as Frisbees. The heavy-gauge
plastic bag that protects my new drives continues
to snugly enclose them with a layer of cushioning
foam at the bottom while they're at rest or in use.
Never having a problem means exercising boring
precautions like those, not assuming that one is
at the mercy of product design that mysteriously
and magically has bad effects in some cases and
not others. A 100 per cent success rate is not
some kind of weird and wonderful happy accident.

	However, the statistics are against them.

If those statistics were meaningful, cartridge
drive users wouldn't have needed them anyway because
we'd already have found out first-hand that cart
drives don't *really* work, and that branch of the
storage industry would have folded (as indeed it
may, but not because of cartridge design).

≪ But these platters never have the essential
protection that a real hard drive, which is
practically a miniature clean room, has. ≫

Put to the test daily in my hellhole of a lab,
this matters not a *fig*. It's a teensy technical
sidebar to the cartridge drive story, although
it may be a convenient way to scare off the kind
of buyers who nod their heads in acknowledgment,
letting you know, yes, they too understand a lot
about technology, and then go around repeating
the teensy technical sidebar to exhibit their deep
expertise. In fact, users need only take reasonable
precautions to protect the drives and cartridges
from contaminants as indeed one should all protect
all electronic equipment. Sorry, as long as my
systems continue to treat Orb and Syquest drives
as hard drives I must believe that they *are*
hard drives and how they are housed is a footnote.

	I have tested dozens of these drives over the years
	and have never once received one I would recommend.

Well, of course not! Your agenda defeats them before
the test begins. I'm conducting a yearslong, ongoing
reality test and results so far don't square with
your conclusions because reality doesn't support your
conviction that only a sealed hard drive can work.
I don't claim that these drives are for everyone
or every purpose but, as someone who values data
portability highly, I consider Syquest and Orb
drives the best thing that happened to PCs before
the light, affordable laptop.

(I have reservations about Iomega drives--not
least because of the Click of Death and Iomega's
long denial it existed, just two Iomega probs a
friend has had to endure. Certainly, byte for byte,
Orbs give far better bang for the buck, but Syquest--
grown complacent with long success--gave the franchise
away when it rejected Fuji's offer of the technology
that became the Zip drive after Fuji then offered
it to Iomega. Now the dude who founded Syquest and
Castlewood--the company that makes Orb--is trying
to play catch-up in a market he once owned, and
Iomega drives are household names.)

My own advice to anyone interested in cartridge
drives is fear not, rtfm, and follow product-care
instructions. I'd never even think of buying
a cartridge drive with an unfamiliar brand name
and I calculate a cartridge drive's cost at
double the asking price because cartridge drives
share one crucial, very real gotcha that makes
me consider an insurance drive an absolute must:

Cartridge drives are proprietary. Not only are
different manufacturers' drives all incompatible
with each other, the same manufacturer's different
models usually are incompatible with each other. Any
manufacturer may phase out any model at any time and
even an established, long-successful company like
Syquest can melt down. While I've had no trouble of
any kind with the Orb or with Syquest cartridges, Syq
235 *drive cases* were fragile. No matter how reliable
the cartridges, without a drive that can read them,
they're as useless as AOL CDs. If the drive breaks
and no replacement is available, all those reliable
cartridges might as well be 8" floppies. ... Ciao. 		--a

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