I have a customer who I set up with a Syquest EZ 230 MB portable drive
three years ago.
It is there strictly for data backup. It is used primarily in Windows 98
DOS...not a DOS window. The computer boots to DOS. I wrote a script that
backs up the data files into a couple of zip files at the end of the day
and then formats the SyQuest drive to check it for errors and finally
copies the Zip files to the Syquest. At the end of the day they take the
Syquest home with them and put another drive in the bay. It has worked
flawlessly for three years but the drive has failed and I need to replace it.

The logical choice is Iomega but here is my problem.
The Syquest can be treated like any IDE drive ...in as much as there is no
switching of drives hot I don't use any drivers. Both DOS and windows sees
it like any other IDE logical drive. I am thinking of replacing it with a
Iomega 250MB Internal ATAPI Zip drive.
I called Iomega and they tell me that there drives are completely
proprietary....The BIOS on the computer may or may not see it as a logical
drive even though it is installed as a IDE on secondary channel as a master
to a slave CD ROM the Bios might see it as a B floppy. However it will
still work without any drivers loaded just like any other IDE hard
drive..but it might be seen as a B drive. Standard Norton Utilities will
not run on their drives and attempting to do so will destroy them.

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. In my
backup script I format the SyQuest in order to catch bad sectors before I
copy the backup zip files to the drive. I will not be able to do this nor
any other kind of simple error checking with the Iomega drive. 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. Pretty much like any other hard drive. They come partitioned and
formatted as logical drives and you use them out of the box . The Syquest
was not like this ..it came partitioned and formatted as a Primary drive.
Out of the four revolving drives three had bad sectors..up to 8 on one
...which is why I did the formatting each time prior to copying the backup
files..as a method of error checking.. If I had been using a regular hard
drive in a mobile bay I would not bother formatting it every day.

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 ?

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 ?

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

Will the drive work in DOS and Windows without loading drivers as long as I
am not hot swapping them ? as Iomega has told me they will ?

thanks
m

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