Re: tlug: Seeking advice on ZIP drives & such w/ Linux

[Masanori "Smiley" OMOTE <omote@example.com>]

Hi Matt,

I'm a user of Jaz 1GB and 230MB MO drives with Linux.  For more info,
please see:
    http://www.imasy.or.jp/~m-omote/spec.html


> * I gather that Iomega ZIP and JAZ drives are supported under Linux. Do
> you know of similar products that specifically are or are not supported?
> Are there any setup problems associated with particular models? Any info
> about comparative quality?

I think any SCSI removable disk with 512 bytes/sector format can be
available on Linux.  Only I had to do on using Jaz disk was,
partitioning, making file system on it and mounnting.  The same
procedure can be okay for MO.

Syquest (www.syquest.com) has announced Quest 4.7GB removable.  I'm
not sure about its hard format.

Syquest also provides SparQ 1.0GB.  The cost for drive and disk is
quite good, but unfortunately they have no SCSI version for it.


> * One of the major things I am thinking about doing with my new storage
> device is to move all my development stuff (i.e., '*.a' libraries &/or
> source trees) off the hard disk. Since I'm not a developer--I just
> compile programs occasionally for my own use--it's not a big problem if
> compilation takes more time due to slow disk access. I'm just wondering
> if there's any reason why this might be a Bad Idea.

Jaz is really a kind of hard drive.  I don't think it is so slow (A
LITTLE BIT slower than SCSI-2 hard drives :-).  Actually, transfer
rate of the I/F on Jaz is 5.0MB/s, while SCSI-2 hard drives have
10.0MB/s speed.  The only disadvantage of Jaz is having no write
buffer, so write speed is not so fast.


Hope it helps.


Regards,
--
Masanori -Smack- OMOTE
omote@example.com
masa@example.com
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