
Iomega Plans 20GB Portable Drives 192
Shivetya writes: "This is cool, the heck with using a palty 650mb of CDROM storage for playing MP3s in your car. According to this article over on CNET IOMEGA may just have a 20gb solution coming with their new "Peerless" system." As michael exults: "Yay! more portable drives that are totally incompatible with everything else including all other Iomega drives! Yay!"
I don't intend to ever buy another Iomega product (Score:1)
I bought a 1G Jaz drive to back up my valuable data. Wrote backups, checked them, they worked, everything was fine. First time I actually needed them, which happened to be a few weeks after the warranty on the drive expired, the data was gone. I should have had another copy for backup, you say; but that was the backup! Months of work down the drain. Nothing that I can't live without, but a lot of stuff I wanted to keep and can never replace. (Including all my old GW-BASIC games from when I was learning to program.)
Upon visiting the Iomega Web site I discovered they were in the middle of a Valentine's Day promotion. "Tell us," they said, "your love story about our products!" The trouble with love stories is that they don't always end happily...
I did eventually find a tech support email address. I wrote a long, detailed, and polite message explaining my problem and the steps I had taken to attempt to fix it (the description above is drastically abbreviated, although accurate as far as it goes). I received a form letter inviting me to call a 1-900 number and pay $29.95 on my credit card for technical support on my Zip [sic] drive.
Because of this experience I do not intend to ever buy, nor recommend to my clients, any Iomega product again.
Re:Who are they kidding? (Score:1)
Here's the problem: My company buys 30 Zip 100 disks every two to three months, we put ads on them and mail them out. They never come back (even though we ask nicely), so we have to eat that $300 every three months. We're starting to send out more on CD-R, which is more trouble but only about $1 ea.
Iomega must be smoking some serious crack if they think that businesses are going to buy 10 to 20 of these little drives at $200 a pop, and send them out, never to be seen again. If I'm going to send out a 20 Gig hard drive, I'm going to send it out in a big external case so that somebody knows they need to return it.
Ummmm.....Let's see (Score:1)
Even better prices are available! (Score:1)
FireWire PC Card $30 [macsales.com]
80 GB FireWire Hard Drive $325 [thenerds.net]
I'm not sure why anyone is defending Iomega on this.
Re:Click of death? (Score:1)
Re:Liars make baby jesus cry... (Score:3)
??? Of Death (Score:1)
As will freezing the water (Score:2)
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Dear IOmega (Score:2)
When Zip first came out I tought "They are going to kill floppies" Of course floppy technology was pretty much on it's death bed already, but Zip drives looked to fill the void left by floppy drives, and IOmega was poised to make a fortune on the media once people started thinking of them as disposable and started buying 100 packs. Then I realized the parallel port interface most people used was slow, and IOmega never seemed willing to drop the media costs down to the
Maybe IOmega really stands for Incredibly Overpriced media electronics guarenteed awful.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
LS-120 Drives (Score:2)
We started getting SuperDrives in 98 when the iMac came out, and they might last 3 monthes and then the drive was dead. And boy those drives were slow. Even reading old floppy drives...they were slow. We tried them for about a year, then gave up on them and started to buy cheap little VST floppy drives that didn't require a power brick like the SuperDrives.
no, not *that* kind of incompatible (Score:2)
A zip 250 came as a "freebie" with this laptop. After having owned and dealt with zip's before, I haven't asked for any spare disks--I *like* being aboe to retrieve my data . . .
hawk
Re:Liars make baby jesus cry... (Score:1)
Alternately, you could just yank out the innards and put a newer, more compatable chassis around the disk itself.
As hardware manufacturers start to address the external bus standards that are now finally available on PCs, the value of overly proprietary solutions from the likes of Iomega quickly tend towards zero.
Riiight... (Score:1)
How many iterations of anti-virus software is out there?
How many brands?
How often do you think they have to update it?
If you're needing anti-virus protection, why use a specialized program that protects just that peerless drive (and needs updating, just like the others) when you can get one that protects everything including the boot sector of all types of bootable drives?
Your reasoning is flawed from the get-go.
Really now... (Score:2)
Re:Final gasps (Score:1)
Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:1)
no, he's talking about Jaz drives also... (Score:3)
Re:no, not *that* kind of incompatible (Score:1)
Click of death? (Score:2)
Prior art - PhatNoise (Score:1)
www.phatnoise.com [phatnoise.com]
Re:Why this sucks, why Iomega must die. (Score:2)
Re:God, Michael is such a tool! (Score:2)
Don't Forget the Castlewood ORB (Score:3)
Previous posters have already made the point that the per-gigabyte cost of this new IOmega drive is preposterously high. But if compact, removable media is what you need, may I humbly suggest you look at the Castlewood ORB [castlewood.com]?
I have one of their external SCSI units. The drive is also available in EIDE, USB and IEEE 1394 (Firewire) flavors. I have five platters, which I use to hold mostly games. The drive works flawlessly with Linux and BeOS, and only exhibits one minor annoyance under Windows (which is probably not Castlewood's fault; Windows doesn't completely flush the desktop's caches when ejecting a platter). The drive seems a bit slow at writing data. This may be because I have the drive configured for highest reliability rather than speed. Though I haven't subjected it to especially hard use, I have yet to suffer any data loss. The media cost is almost reasonable at $30 for 2.2 Gigs.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Castlewood other than as a satisfied customer.
Schwab
ALERT: Raging morons! READ THIS. (Score:1)
To begin with, I will state right now that I am an employee of Iomega, though I have nothing to with hardware. It's great to see that no one on this site ever bothers to read up on anything, and just posts whatever excrement happens to pop into their heads as fast as possible.
I'm just pissed off that there really are so many morons that post here.
Now, that's out of the way, and you all hate me...
The peerless drive has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Jaz (non)-technology. It is nothing at all like the Jaz, and suffers from NONE of the limitations of the Jaz. It's faster, it's FAR more reliable, and best of all it's SEALED MEDIA.
It also has nothing to do with Zip technology.
Or click.
Or any other 10-year old glorified floppy or unsealed hard drive tech. This shit is brand-new.
Yes, I agree the price is pretty sick.. but what do you expect? Where are all the other portable solutions that fill the gap the Peerless meets? Don't even bring up the "portable" firewire and USB hard drives, because not only are they MUCH larger, they are MUCH heavier, and require MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE POWER. I'd really like to see you hook a portable usb hard drive up to something like a portable mp3 player, and expect it to stay powered on for more than a few minutes. Get real, please.
I also have to question the grip on reality some people have. This is not a shiny, happy world, and companies are FOR SURE neither shiny, nor happy. I want to know what other company, in the same position as iomega, would have done anything differently in light of their own click of death? I seriously doubt ANY of them would admit to anything.
If you knew how much hardware you all had in your machines that had firmware full of holes, you would be sick. Try getting the manufacturers to admit to it.. and good luck.
None of you have to buy this thing, and at that price I don't blame you. But I really wish SOMEONE would take the time to fucking read about something before shooting off at the mouth.
Mmm. That $168 10GB USB external... (Score:2)
The removable drives Iomega is putting inside a convenient cartridge? They're a less than a quarter the size and weight. Standalone USB/Firewire drives in that class run about $350 for 10GB and $450 for 20GB. If you have computers equipped to handle them at home and at work, those carts start to look like a darn good deal.
Hey, if you want to carry around big drives that weigh more than your laptop to "save money", that's your business. But the graphic artists who have sworn by Zip drives since they came out will like these a whole lot. And as the guy who does purchasing for a 40-person design staff, I'd sure rather buy a few Firewire Peerless docks and get $200 carts for the staff that need them rather then buy all of them $450 pocket firewire drives. The heavy ones aren't an option. Try telling people carrying a laptop bag to carry one of those big "bargain" portable hard drives. Would you want to carry one yourself every day? And take it on trips?
so? (Score:1)
Iomega is a has-been. Get a portable Firewire drive.
Iomega, don't think so. (Score:1)
Iomega was interested in gouging customers rather than making a dependable product. Costs were in my opinion excessive, plus their need to deliver a product to lock in users was complete BS.
As far as I am concerned Iomega burned their bridges with me and I will never purchase equipment from them again.
Lando
Re:"Peerless"? (Score:1)
Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:1)
That and that fact that 20GB of storage that isn't part of a RAID array or has various backup procedures surrounding it just scares me
PS: Sig quote is 'You ever dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?' (I always ask that of all my prey)
--
Delphis
Re:Rip-off! (Score:1)
What?
Don't be silly.
--
Delphis
Re:no, not *that* kind of incompatible (Score:1)
Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:1)
http://www.1stclasstech.com/remhardrivmo.html [1stclasstech.com]
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Re:Hrm (Score:1)
Just my perspective in life...
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"Peerless"? (Score:5)
Iomega is so excited about this evolution of the Jaz drive. I think a more appropriate name would be Iomega Jiz.
Why is this such a big deal? (Score:1)
Punch cards didn't work in cassette tape drives. Cassettes didn't work in 5.25" floppy drives. 5.25" floppies didn't fit in 3.5" drives. 3.5" floppies didn't fit into CD rom drives.
So what? This isn't something that Iomega invented, it's the way that things work.
If you don't think it's a good idea, don't buy it and it'll die like the LS-120 has pretty much done.
LK
Out of stock/another link (Score:1)
"The company said it has a backlog of about 25,000 units. It will begin to ship drives this week to those who ordered early, and the models will hit retail store shelves in late June."
pulled from this article [yahoo.com].
Re:Good Lord (Score:1)
If you care about performance and you bought a drive that hooks up to a parallel port, then the problem is with your sense of judgement, not IOMega's ability to build drives.
With my 10 year old Amiga and a SCSI Zip drive, such a transfer takes less than a minute and uses less than 10% CPU. If such performance figures are important to you, then you should upgrade your pentium system to something of at least 1980s technology.
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Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:2)
There's no way such a drive would survive the same type of handling that I subject my 100MB Zip disks to. (And let's not even get into what kind of abuse CDRs and floppies can take.)
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If it's as bad as the JAZ drives... (Score:1)
CD-R/CD-RW are much cheaper anyway, and have similar data rates except for writing
Re:proprietary (Score:2)
Re:NOW WITH 20,000% MORE DATA LOSS!!! (Score:1)
Goddamnit (Score:2)
Oh yeah, if you haven't seen the riovolt yet, It's a diamond rio device that actually reads burned cds of mp3 or wma files. It also functions as a portable cd player. It's pretty nifty and great for taking to the fitness center.
Why is this so difficult? (Score:1)
Why do I bother?
Liars make baby jesus cry... (Score:3)
Sorry son, you lose this one.
God, Michael is such a tool! (Score:5)
Re:Why this sucks, why Iomega must die. (Score:3)
If you would check out www.iomega.com instead of relying on c|crap, you'd know that there's a 1394 and SCSI module available
why use it? Here's why (Score:1)
At least now, you can create a divx/dvd, put it on a disc and reuse it. well, at least a small dvd
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Re:Rip-off! (Score:1)
but what about... (Score:2)
But what about laptop 2.5" drives? 9.5mm 20gb drives are only about $120 now. I'm sure somebody could make one of these portable.
And remember, you don't even NEED the drive unit, just an IDE connector.
By the way, I've tried one of those USB external drives, and they're not all they're cracked up to be. I don't know about the latest linux kernels, but redhat 7.0 didn't recognize the drive. Even with windows they require a driver CD to tag along. However, the worst thing is that they're painfully slow.
I think firewire drives may be ok, but firewire isn't ubiquitous yet.
Re:Highway robbery! (Score:1)
Oh, well...
Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:2)
H"ave you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"
But anyway...
Cheaper/Smaller/Better? Alternatives (Score:1)
Sound quality (Score:1)
The point is, MP3s can sound really nice when you use a good DAC and headphone amplifier [headphone.com]. Even highly integrated versions of these components can add a few bucks to a player -- but why not offer customers an option to step up the sound quality of all their MP3s, no matter what the bitrate?
-David.
Re:Sound quality (Score:1)
Junky digital camera lenses are precisely analogous to MP3 player analog circuits. Nice insight.
-David.
Driver, not the drive (Score:1)
Then as a test -- one of the first things that I did when examining Linux four years ago -- I set up Linux with my parallel port Zip drive. I used X as a rudamentary "extra load" while copying to and from the Zip drive. I saw no visible slowdown.
Granted, Iomega wrote the Zip PPA driver, but there may have been only so much they could do with what they had to work with (Windows parallel port driver)
Re:X Window System (Score:1)
Starting X on a system is CPU and disk intensive. Doing it in addition to a file process over a parallel port is aptly referred to as a "rudimentary extra load." I wasn't looking for exact timing. I was checking the oh-so-subjective "does it act slower" benchmark; I was eyeballing it with a wristwatch.
The fact remains, unlike DOS/Win or OS/2, Linux did not stutter, wince, or otherwise bog the system down when making a large file transfer with an Iomega parallel port Zip drive.
I know how you feel about the lameness filter. I triggered the lameness filter while posting a C++ code sample. What is slashdot coming to indeed.
Note: It's generally a good idea to benchmark items on working samples -- how long it takes you to get done what you would normally want to do. uptime, ps and top would not necessarily be a better indicator in this case.
And on a completely different note, I had a drive that clicked, but after a while, the clicking stopped and the drive functions fine to this day. Go figure.
Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:2)
So if I'm not satisfied, what do I get in return? Personally, I think I'd like some rebate coupons [iomega.com] for some reliable products [grc.com].
< tofuhead >
--
what's cheaper (Score:1)
Price per gig (Score:1)
Even CDs are getting pretty close on a $/MB scale now, assuming around $1.50 for a CD and jewel case.
- WrexSoul
\/.
vvv
and it sucks (Score:2)
Frankly either the media is too small, or it's really too expensive, but either way it's already dead considering HD prices.
NOW WITH 20,000% MORE DATA LOSS!!! (Score:5)
I trust Iomega to hold my data like I trust a sieve to hold water.
-Adam
This message created with 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Good Lord (Score:3)
I think I'll give this one a miss.
dude (Score:5)
Someone slap that idiot. How are they supposed to be compatible with previous drives??? Find a answer to that question and then I'll give you permission to complain. Storage devices are very technology dependent, where the actual PHYSICAL properties of each drive change as they gain the ability to store more data on them. It's not like they're just writing software.
Between that comment and the stupid review of Myst III, someone should really consider kicking "Michael" out of here. He provides absolutely nothing beneficial to this site.
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Re:proprietary (Score:2)
Yeah, those SyQuest drives, which were neither open, licensable, nor cheap REALLY suffered in the market, didn't they... it's not like they became a standard used by advertising agencies, magazines, and television stations (some of which are still using them) or anything.... oh, wait...
Re:dude (Score:2)
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Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:2)
Now, as to whether this new storage media from Iomega will be as "rugged" as a floppy/zip/jaz disc, I could not find anything...the fact that the read/write heads are integrated with the disc, like an HDD, the above argument against durability of an HDD may apply just as well to the peerless disks.
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Napster response (Score:2)
"If folks can't use a Peer to Peer network system to trade files, we'll let 'em pile everything on portable drives so they can swap music in person. The system isn't P2P, it's Peerless!"
Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:2)
The removable drive bay is a cheap solution, but it's not very easy to use (for non-technical types), and it's not very portable (unless you can install a drive bay everywhere you're going to use it -- and this doesn't solve the laptop problem).
A "better" (but a bit more expensive) solution is to buy an external drive case with either a USB or firewire interface. It's pretty easy to find these (although USB is the only really ubiquitous interface supported by all the major OSes). You'll probably want to get the version for 2.5" drives, as the 3.5" drive cases are pretty big. The 2.5" drives also tend to be more shock-resistant than 3.5" ones. These cases are more portable and are easier to use (just plug them into the USB or firewire port -- you don't have to crack the case and hope there's a free IDE cable).
Why are they even removeable? (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure the jacket thingy doesn't have very much on board, and I wonder how many plug-unplug cycles you get before something breaks. And you can get 1394 to USB converters, 1394 to SCSI, etc.
The only advantage to doing it this way is the specific case of SCSI: you can swap out a cartridge without having to reboot. SCSI doesn't do hot-plugging very well. (On many systems you can hot-plug a SCSI device and refresh the bus and all will be well, but on other systems [e.g. WinNT] you must reboot.) This doesn't seem like enough of an advantage to make it worth locking yourself in with Iomega.
steveha
How long before cars have a drive slot? (Score:2)
Re:Any portable storage is good portable storage.. (Score:2)
So, who would want this? (Score:2)
You could simply buy a big HD for your laptop, and bring that around instead of the removable disks. The same goes for portable mp3-players or anything else small. You don't need removable media, just buy more mp3-players (or whatever your favourite unit is). With todays prices on most electronics, this seems a lot cheaper than carrying around removable harddisks.
On the other hand, if what you want is large storage capacity for archival or backup-purposes (and therefore need some kind of removable media), then CD-RW or exabyte tapes seems much more reasonable to me. At least when it comes to price. Shure, they are more inconvenient, but also a lot cheaper.
Looks to be a good design though... (Score:2)
bad from an usability standpoint.
It is really a three part device:
A hard drive :
(The disk cartridge is a sealed design with the
read/write heads included in the cart)
A drive bay :
(The cart slides into a bay which I assume
provides the power and data connection for
the cartridge)
A connection bus cradle :
(The drive bay attaches to a cradle that has
the connection type - firewire - USB - SCSI,
that connects to the users system)
The nice thing about this idea is that it frees Iomega
from the trouble of building the interface into the
drive itself. Allowing them (hopefully) to concentrate
more quality control on the individual components, and
allowing for easy adapting to changing intefaces on
multiple machines.
One potential downside I see, is that the cartridge and bay
are designed to stand up in the cradle, taking an awkward
amount more of vertical space than previous Iomega drives.
And the true performance of the drive in this configuration
has yet to be benchmarked.
The biggest problem Iomega faces are people like me, who
stopped using my Jaz drive last year, because the Castlewood
Orb drive is easier to lug back and forth to work, and
CD-R/CDRW is a better medium for long term data archival.
about time... (Score:2)
________
Rip-off! (Score:3)
You know what else is rougly the size of a handheld computer and has more space? A hard drive.
You know what is roughly the size of a PDA and has more space? A laptop hard drive.
You know what costs the most, is proprietary, is not consumer tested, and comes from a company with a history of low quality drives? The new iomega drive.
I can only think of three words right now:
Thanks for nothing.
Re:Final gasps (Score:2)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Re:Final gasps (Score:2)
I know one guy that has a devoted client list, 8O+ years old, expert only in Corel Draw - doing very well thank you. typically takes his work to a service bureau. Accessing anything over a network results in data overload and brain lockup for the guy.
Obviously, he is not a geek. Of course, a lot of small businesses are just like this.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Re:Final gasps (Score:2)
For all I know it was a bournoulli drive, or something like that.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:2)
You every dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?
Highway robbery! (Score:2)
The article says that the drive is $250; 10 Gbyte disks are $160; and 20 Gbyte disks are $200.
Now, why should I spend that much when the lowest price for a 10 Gbyte external USB drive on Pricewatch [pricewatch.com]is $141, and a 20 Gbyte is $168?
C'mon, the form factor can't be worth that much, now, can it? Especially considering it's ``roughly the size of a handheld computer or PDA.''
b&
Why bother with all these devices ? (Score:2)
Just visit the web site, 'kay? (Score:2)
Yeah, it's costly and incompatible with your DVD/CD players. But it's not like it doesn't have any advantages.
Re:proprietary (Score:2)
however, they do rather efficiently dig their own graves AND make the world a whole lot less convenient for the rest of us. consider iomega jaz vs cd-rw... jaz holds about 50 percent more, it writes/rewrites faster and it's more durable. had iomega opened the jaz spec and allowed other companies to make it, jaz could very well had become a standard. had it become a standard, the media would have been mass produced properly, and the prices of the media would have dropped signifigantly. they would have made more drives, sold more media, and it would have been cheaper for the customer. however, they decided that they wanted to be the only one in the jaz game, nobody bought it, and it became another incompatible standard that wasn't really standard. iomega effectively dug their own grave. open standards aren't about the greedy masses wanting to be able to feed off of the work of the diligent few. open standards attempt to help the end user by setting standards, and allowing other people to use said standards to make the final product cheaper/more familiar/easier to use/etc...
lets say that somebody wanted to send me a rather large file... i'm on a dialup connection, so he sure as hell isn't going to email it to me. i'd tell him to put it on some sort of removable media and overnight it to me. if he says 'well, do you have a jaz drive?' i'm going to say 'fuck you, put it on cd' and he's probably going to say something like 'how about a 2.2GB castlewood orb drive? have one of those?' to which i will reply 'fuck you, put it on cd'
at this point he'll break down and tell me that he doesn't own a CD-r, because he didn't feel that iomega was violating anybody's god given rights.
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
Re:Pron, Warez and Mp3s. Oh my. (Score:2)
Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
So what's the catch on this one? (Score:2)
Re:God, Michael is such a tool! (Score:2)
--CTH
PS: the first fault people will find with this posting is that they feel the IPMEGA drives are over-priced. It's not that they're over-priced. It's simply that they aren't price-optimized with regard to internal componant quality/price and so fourth. The company could increase their profit margin and reach a larger customer base by making such optimizations, but it's a testiment to the popularity of their products (and the fact that they filll a critical market niche) that the company isn't motivated to do this.
--
I'm not giving them more of my money. (Score:3)
I'm sorry, but with the a removable drive bay [compgeeks.com] costing just $7.50 and a 20 gig drive near a $100 or less, I'm not seeing the Iomega offering as a solution that I want to buy into.
Besides I'm very reluctant to give more money to Iomega. Iomega got off the hook on the class action suit against them for making defective Zip drives (ie the click of death). The terms being "in order to collect your damages you must buy more stuff from us" which I question as punishment to the company and a settlement for my time, data lost and cost to replace the defective hardware.
And it wasn't just Zip disk/drive that were an issue. We were told that Jazz drives were the solution for1 gig removable storage. But that drive and media also had problems.
I predict that whatever Iomega is planning/making will continue to be very costly compared to the cost of DVD-R media, portable drives, or other media types not yet invented.
Buying one of these is a bad idea. (Score:2)
Iomega has a long history of never significantly lowering their prices for removable media. If they still sold 10MB Bernoulli cartridges, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see they still cost $200.
20 GB Portable Drive (Score:5)
Two Steps two obtain:
1. Buy removable drive bay [vikingcomputers.net]
2. Buy 20GB hard drive [pricewatch.com]
Instant Portability! Satisfaction Guarenteed!
Re:ALERT: Raging morons! READ THIS. (Score:2)
Well Archos [archos.com] sell a nifty MP3 player built arround a hard drive that can be had for $250 or thereabouts with discounts that also doubles as a 6Gb USB drive. Not only does it not require the overpriced docking station you can use it to play tunes.
Don't even bring up the "portable" firewire and USB hard drives, because not only are they MUCH larger, they are MUCH heavier, and require MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE POWER.
Nope, thing runs for 8 hours on the internal batteries (NiMH) and is smaller than my Palm VII on two dimensions whilst being only slightly thicker.
Now IOM are offering slightly more capacity, but Archos have been out for several months now and I'll wager that a 12Gb disk will not be long coming.
For long term archival storage I just go down to CostCo and plonk a 60Gb drive in my cart, take it home, run a backup then take it offline and store it in the firesafe. Total cost $180, I keep a second in my desk drawer in the office. Vastly cheaper than any tape system and much more reliable.
I cannot imagine any need that I have that the IOM drive solves for me. I use my archos box for really big file transfers and CompactFlash (or the Internet) for the rest.
IBMs 1Gb compact flash drive has enough capacity for any imaginable still photography needs I might have. If they could get the price down low they would also be good enough for my video needs too.
As an exercise I actually tried taking videos with a simulated 2Gb cartridge - I cut a box of 10 DV tapes down to 2 minutes so that I had to keep changing the cartridge. It was not all that bad.
My prefered video solution would still consist of a detached CCD head and optics connected to a hip mounted battery pack and hard drive.
Final gasps (Score:2)
Zip? Dead. 100/200 Mbs just doesn't cut it now that you can transfer your data over the Net.
Jaz? Dead. 1/2 Gbs in a portable format? The primary places where this amount of data is being moved is within companies. In that space, it's a simple matter of sharing out a drive and transferring the 1/2 Gigs over the ethernet.
Clik? Dead. Done in my Smart Media and Compact Flash.
20 Gig portable storage? DOA. Wireless ethernet and larger hard drives already exist and can be adapted to any environment that Iomega can imagine for lower cost.
In the storage industry, you can't expect to build something once and rest on your laurels. The name of the game is evolution and Iomega has some serious genetic defects.
Dancin Santa
Re:dude (Score:2)
Well, for one thing, these new drives require a proprietary adapter to connect to your computer. This adapter doesn't seem to be compatible with any other drives. Say what you will about compatibility with older media, but the connection to the computer shouldn't be proprietary and newfangled-- not at this stage in the game.
In any case, Michael's got a good point. It doesn't matter how right you are about the technical aspects. If the drive requires you to switch all of your media and turns out to be a significant pain in the ass for consumers, it'll die a flaming, hellish death-- regardless of whether it's fair or not.
Re:dude (Score:2)
1. Marketing. For example, the customer that told me we had to get a zip drive so they could mail us disks probably never heard of the LS-120. (Of course, now we just use CD-R and almost any computer can read the disks.
2. That compatibility comes at a price. A have had problems now and then the 1.44 meg floppies because the case is so thin it flexes more than it should and apparently the drive heads can't find the tracks. I've also had instances where the drive itself would flex too much when you bolted it in. By abandoning the standard form factors, Iomega could put massive cases on the disk and the drive, so they will never flex. The LS-120 is as thin and not-quite-rigid as the 1.44's, so unless they have compensated for this somehow, I wouldn't expect high reliability.
3. By now, the time for super-floppies has come and gone. The drives are only a little cheaper than CD-R/RW drives, the disks are a lot more expensive, and with CD-R I can create a disk that you don't need a special drive to read.
Re:dude (Score:2)
Pron, Warez and Mp3s. Oh my. (Score:5)
just get portable FireWire or USB (Score:2)
Just get portable FireWire or USB drives. You don't have the hassle of using a "sleeve", you won't be tied to a single vendor for your next drive, and it will be more compatible.
Re:dude (Score:2)
Easy--dispense with the proprietary dock and go with a FireWire connector on the disk: it's smaller and it's more compatible. If they want to sell universal connectivity, they can sell USB-to-FireWire and SCSI-to-FireWire adapters with that.
Click....Click....Click (Score:5)
Re:20 GB Portable Drive (Score:2)
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I feel a Genesis Coming On... (Score:2)
And God created the Zip drive and the SparQ, and -lo! - they were both overpriced, and did gougeth the hapless consumer, as God commanded in Microsoft 10:12 "Thou Shalt exploiteth the ignorance of the user, for his soul grows as his pocketbook shrinketh".
And the consumers did buy the Zip, but not the SparQ, though it was thre mightier drive. And Iomega grew fat on their success, and did make more and bigger drives.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of overpriced external drives, I shall buy none, for the best form of backup is simply a second hard drive.