Iomega JAZ Drive

[fanman93]

I came across an interesting piece of hardware today - a JAZ drive. It's very similar to the old ZIP drives, with the exception that it needed another adaptor and was pretty much a portable hard drive. This is the 1GB model from 1995, which was huge in those days for PC (and Mac, I think) users.

This drive used an adapter compatible with the SCSI interface, and eventually became compatible with USB through an SCSI-to-USB connector, though it suffered speed loss. Through the SCSI interface, it could achieve transfer speeds of up to 8MB/s (1.5MB/s on USB) and had a total RPM of 5000RPM. It was originally formatted for use on the PC (meaning FAT16), but could be formatted for use with Macs (Why it wouldn't would be beyond me - it brags about it on the cover).

For those wondering, it's about the size of a 3 1/4 floppy, but much thicker. I haven't been able to test it, since I don't have an adapter, and everything at home is IDE and not SCSI. Anyone had any experience with these?

Obligatory pictures below.















If people have trouble viewing the pictures, they can be accessed here: https://picasaweb.google.com/1136786613 ... directlink

[Stephen Coates]

I have one

I bought a second hand 2GB Jaz Drive in 2006. Don't really use it much, but I do use it for backup purposes on my PowerBooks.

I should be able to get it to work on my PC as I have a SCSI card but I would need an adapter cable for it.

I have two 1GB disks and two 2GB disks but unfortunately the 2GB disks don't work. I never figured out why. They could be faulty.

[fanman93]

They're apparently known to break, though not as often as the ZIP drives. Something to do with the Click of Death. It's been a while since I've used anything from 1995 to the early 2000s, so I can't offer much insight. I honestly didn't know these drives existed until yesterday, however.