Mark Rode wrote:

> I called Iomega and they tell me that their drives are completely proprietary.... Standard Norton Utilities >will not run on their drives and attempting to do so will destroy them.

   That's what they like to espouse. However, as a former consultant to
Iomega I can tell you that I have used NU without any problems on scores
of Zip and Jaz drive cartridges. You think Symantec is going to write
software that will destroy data files or hardware? *;-) Probably the
same folks who believe that will tell you a virus ruined your hard drive
and you need a replacement.


    It's just a case of overzealous Iomega employees ($8 an hour folks)
quoting the company line ("Use our software only"). I've always been a
push the envelope guy myself and have never been afraid to experiment.
<g>

> OK here is my problem.....you can not use windows or DOS to partition or
> format the drives ..Iomega provides proprietary software to do this.

   Windows and DOS format.com works fine on Jaz and Zip media...I have
used it countless times with /U and /Q switches over the past 5 years.
The Zip disks are just overgrown floppies (see that shutter?). Did you
ever use proprietary software for your last batch of floppies? The Jaz
disks are hard drives using the proven Winchester technology. You can
format all of them with Iomega's stuff or use Microsoft's utilities.


> Iomega tells me that it is very rare for their products to develop bad sectors and you
> can treat them like you would a regular hard drive in this regard. One
> might come out of the factory with one  or two on rare occasions but very
> unusual.

   Rare? I'd say 1 in 200 is almost rare (100,000 bad drives out of 20
million produced). But if you happen to be one who gets a click of death
unit then you'll be peeved. However, Iomega has been fairly consistent
in the past two years in honoring a replacement policy for dead drives.
Dead disks is another matter. Don't continue feeding disks into a Zip
drive clicking strangely...it might chew them up permanently.


> Questions
> Are Iomega drives ..particularly the 250MB drive as reliable as they tell
> me ? In other words are they as reliable as any other hard drive in regards
> to bad sectors ?

   No they are not as reliable as regular IDE or SCSI drives. But they
are better than floppies (that's not saying a lot comparing it to a
nickel technology) >;-> However, I'd trust my data to the 250 cartridges
if I rotated a 5 disk set and kept two sets off the premises.

> Do they come partitioned and formatted as a logical drive and are they seen by the BIOS as a regular logical > drive in DOS and windows even though no drivers are loaded ?

   Yes, they can in Windows if you blow out all the Iomega drivers and
let the native Windows 98 drivers take over (I have clean reformatted
several Compaq's at my site which have internal Zips (not the 250s) and
they
are detected as drive letters in Windows. To make them run in DOS you'd
have to load the real mode Iomega drivers (which I haven't done as I
have no need for that feature).

  I do have several external Jaz and Zip drives and I rarely install any
Iomega drivers. I use universal Windows 98 Iomega drivers in Windows if
they are regularly attached (or guest95.exe if they are infrequently
attached and in DOS I use guest.exe). I used to use the dog out of my
external Zip drives, but after they developed the Traveler parallel port
adapters for the external Jaz I put my Zip on the shelf and rarely use
it. The Jaz with SCSI and parallel port capabilities provides all I need
for backing up data, Ghosting partitions, and burning CDs. Especially as
Windows .CAB files went over 100 MB for Win98 the Jaz became much more
useful for installing Windows on machines without a CD drive.

>
> Is there any simple way to error check them and if so how?

  Norton Disk Doctor. *;-) Scandisk can also be used.


Hope that helps,


Russell Smith
Edtech Consultant, Journalist
http://camalott.com/~rssmith
mailto:[log in to unmask]

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