Jaz drive
Encyclopedia
Disk storage
Disk storage or disc storage is a general category of storage mechanisms, in which data are digitally recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical methods on a surface layer deposited of one or more planar, round and rotating disks...
system, introduced by the Iomega
Iomega
Iomega is an American producer of consumer external, portable and networking storage hardware. Established in the 1980s, Iomega has sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks. On April 8, 2008, EMC Corporation announced its plans to acquire Iomega for a consideration of US $213M...
company in 1995. The system has since been discontinued.
The Jaz disks were originally released with a 1 GB capacity (there was also 540 MB, but it was unreleased) in a 3½-inch form factor, which was a significant increase over Iomega's most popular product at the time, the Zip drive
Zip drive
The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB....
with its 100 MB capacity. The Jaz drive used only the SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
interface (the IDE
AT Attachment
Parallel ATA , originally ATA, is an interface standard for the connection of storage devices such as hard disks, solid-state drives, floppy drives, and optical disc drives in computers. The standard is maintained by X3/INCITS committee...
internal version is rare), but an adapter known as Jaz Traveller was available to connect it to a standard Parallel Port
Parallel port
A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers for connecting various peripherals. In computing, a parallel port is a parallel communication physical interface. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port...
. The capacity was later increased to 2 GB through a drive and disk revision in 1998, before the Jaz line was ultimately discontinued in 2002.
Overview
Unlike the Zip, which is floppy disk technology (a PET filmPET film (biaxially oriented)
BoPET is a polyester film made from stretched polyethylene terephthalate and is used for its high tensile strength, chemical and dimensional stability, transparency, reflectivity, gas and aroma barrier properties and electrical insulation.A variety of companies manufacture boPET and other...
disk), the Jaz is hard disk
Hard disk
A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
drive technology, using rigid platters. The Jaz drive is a type of removable rigid disk (RRD) drive, with two platters (4 writable surfaces) contained within a thick cartridge with sliding door. Like the Zip disk, the Jaz disk has a reflective piece in the bottom corner so the drive may detect its capacity before loading. (The 1 GB drive will immediately reject 2 GB disks.) The drive itself contains the spindle motor, read/write heads, voice-coil actuator and drive controller. The Jaz disk is spun at approximately 5000 RPM. The Jaz drive showed much promise, with a system very similar to high-end laptop hard drives to park the heads and the drive automatically brakes the disk using reverse torque before auto-eject, unlike most of SyQuest's devices. The Jaz drive is much more fragile than the Zip drive and unlike the Zip can only be used lying horizontally on a flat surface.
Reception
The Jaz never attained as much success or market penetration as the Zip, and explanations for this vary. Some attribute it to poor marketing on Iomega's part or that it was largely unnecessary to transport a gigabyte worth of information at a time when hard drives were still only a few gigabytes. Others attribute slow sales to its cost per megabyte being too high. While the Zip drive was marketed as a high-capacity floppy diskFloppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
, originally the Jaz drive was directed to a higher-end market and saw little in the SOHO
Small office/home office
Small office/home office, or SOHO, refers to the category of business or cottage industry which involves from 1 to 10 workers. SOHO can also stand for single office/home office....
or consumer markets. Compared to the SCSI Zip drive, which used DB25 connectors, the Jaz used the HD50 connectors and supported ID 0-6. The SCSI interface itself was highly priced and was too costly for most home users. The rising popularity and decreasing price of CD-R
CD-R
A CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....
/CD-RW
CD-RW
A CD-RW is a rewritable optical disc. It was introduced in 1997, and was known as "CD-Writable" during development. It was preceded by the CD-MO, which was never commercially released....
and DVD+-R/DVD+-RW drives greatly hurt the success of the drive since their price per megabyte was much lower and because these discs could be read in almost any standard ROM drive (respective of format).
Problems
In terms of reliability the Jaz drive by design is much less prone to Click of deathClick of death
Click of death is a term that became common in the late 1990s referring to the clicking sound in disk storage systems that signals the disk drive has failed, often catastrophically.- Origin of the term :...
. Even so the Jaz drive has its own share of problems, and may still corrupt data as a result of damaged read/write heads. Earlier Jaz drives were prone to overheating and in some cases, the loading mechanism jams left a cartridge stuck in the drive. Forcibly ejecting the cartridge in this case usually ends in the destruction of both drive and cartridge. Since they were based on hard disk technology, one big problem that plagues all removable RRD drives is the risk of contaminants ending up in the drive. The Jaz cartridge outside its case is prone to getting dust/grit into it through the hole where the motor drives the platters, and any dust built up on the external case could end up in the drive with the next insertion. Even if this is not the case, the metal sliding door is capable of wearing the plastic, which results in debris. As a result, head crash
Head crash
A head crash is a hard-disk failure that occurs when a read–write head of a hard disk drive comes in contact with its rotating platter, resulting in permanent and usually irreparable damage to the magnetic media on the platter surface....
es have occurred with some Jaz drives.
Furthermore, the mechanism used to attach the platters to the spindle motor is complex and prone to vibration (as many complained of noisy drives). Iomega implemented an anti-gyro device (much like an optical CD/DVD drive) within the cartridge to prevent this at spin-up, but it loses effectiveness with age. As a result, the two platters could lose alignment, rendering the cartridge unusable. Also in certain scenarios the plastic gears attached to the bottom of a Jaz cartridge were prone to stripping and breaking which rendered the inserted disk physically damaged and unable to be spun up to operating RPMs.
Legacy
The modern REV driveIomega REV
REV was a removable hard disk storage system from Iomega.The small removable cartridges store 35, 70, or 120 gigabytes and were based on hard-drive technology. Like a standard hard drive, the REV system used a flying head to read and write data to a spinning platter...
seems to be a new attempt to take on the market that the Jaz drive could not, using similar technology. But unlike the Jaz, Iomega decided to place the platter motor within the cartridge and change the door to a flip, very similar to a VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
or DAT
Digital Audio Tape
Digital Audio Tape is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a compact audio cassette, using 4 mm magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. As...
cassette, in order to reduce number of external moving parts and openings.
See also
- Iomega Peerless a jaz substitute of 20 Gb.
- Zip driveZip driveThe Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB....
- Iomega REVIomega REVREV was a removable hard disk storage system from Iomega.The small removable cartridges store 35, 70, or 120 gigabytes and were based on hard-drive technology. Like a standard hard drive, the REV system used a flying head to read and write data to a spinning platter...
- Bernoulli drive
- Ditto driveDitto driveThe Ditto Drive series was a proprietary magnetic tape data storage system released by Iomega during the 1990s. It was marketed as a backup device for personal computers....
- Orb DriveOrb DriveThe Orb Drive was a 3.5" removable hard disk drive introduced by Castlewood Systems in 1999. Its original capacity was 2.2 GB. A later version of the drive was introduced in 2001 with a capacity of 5.7 GB.-2.2 GB Drive Specifications:...
- SparQ drive