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08/08/2004 |
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Iomega's Zip 250 drive and FireWire Adapter Ian Waugh zips his way through the hot IEEE1394 connected storage system from Iomega
Zip drives have been around long enough so nothing new there. Traditionally, they connect to your system via a USB adapter (although there are parallel port, PCMCIA and ATAPI drives, too) which makes them easy to add and remove from a system. Now, USB may be convenient but it's not the fastest communications protocol in the world and USB drives may seem a little slow after IDE and SCSI. So Iomega has released the FireWire Adapter with Go Faster stripes. It connects to the drive via the ATAPI connector on the back and thereafter it's a FireWire machine. Systems with a 6-pin FireWire connection can power the drive so you won't need an external power supply. This is good stuff and ideal for laptop users. Although the Zip250 is designed for 250Mb cartridges, it can also handle 100Mb Zip disks although these work much more slowly than the 250Mb disks both with and without the FireWire Adapter. The speed difference with 100Mb disks using the USB and FireWire interfaces are not great and you're unlikely to notice any difference so don't buy the Adapter if you mainly want to use 100Mb disks. The Zip drives and Adapter are compatible with both PCs and Macs and Mac users will be pleased to know that it can be used as a boot drive (check that you have Apple's latest FireWire drivers). It's a shame that Iomega doesn't offer a FireWire version of the drive at the same price as the others. The additional cost of a FireWire Adapter is significant. However, if you use the drive a lot and find yourself twiddling your thumbs while copying data, you may find it a most worthwhile investment. It certainly does what it says on the tin. |
One
of the neat things about USB is that it's hot-swappable which means
you can plug and unplug the drive without switching off your
computer.
The
blurb claims that the FireWire Adapter can more than double the
transfer rate of the data - and wouldn't you know it, but it does,
too! If you improve the performance of your system by 10, 20 or
sometimes even 50 percent, it's not always easy to appreciate the
speed increase. However, the double-speed here is very noticeable
and you'll think your drive is on, er, speed...