Well, seems time to chime in. We use zips all over the place,=20
and other than the occasional "click of death" problems (fairly
rare, but the department probably has over a hundred drives),=20
never had problems. Have heard about much more trouble with=20
jaz's, but I highly recommend zips because of their huge=20
popularity. Likely they will be around a long time. I have=20
students write to six zips, and when they're full they write=20
a CD. That keeps the total cost very reasonable, and an easy
system to implement and use.
We have a MO drive from Apex, but had huge trouble getting it=20
repaired last year. Couldn't read a lot of archived data for=20
over a month, and no way they would fix it any quicker (an
unacceptable delay for repairing a storage device!). I strongly
recommend avoiding at least this particular company, and really
any large storage device unless you can afford two drives. =20
That way, at least you can still work if one of the drives fails.
Charlie
At 08:17 AM 12/9/99 +0000, DR. RAINER HAE=DFNER wrote:
>Hi, all,
>
>due to my personal experiences with ZIP disks and different
>drives I would disagree with the opinion below. We had a lot
>of trouble (and data loss) if we use ZIP disks with different
>drives. I didn't look for the reason of this behaviour (maybe
>different head adjustments, maybe dust, maybe some other
>reason).
>Personally I would recommend MO drives and media. The
>drive is somewhat more expensive in comparison to a ZIP drive
>but the media are much cheaper and the reliability is better
>by one or two orders of magnitude.
>
>Rainer Haessner
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Charles G. Fry, Ph.D. Tel: (608)262-3182
Director, MR Facility Fax: (608)262-0381
Chem. Dept., Univ. Wisconsin
Madison, WI 53706 USA email: fry@chem.wisc.edu
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