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Web Developer's Journal Archive SectionBernoulli Transportableby Kief Morris |
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I must admit, at first the idea of removable drives didn't appeal to me. They seemed like some weird technology that probably wasn't ready for prime time, and I couldn't really see how they could be useful to me. After pounding on two very different units from Iomega for a month or so, I'm sold—these things are great. My editor has been making noises about taking them away from me so he can try them out himself, but he'll have to be pretty quick with his fists if he wants them. Removable drives are the kind of thing that, once you have them, make you wonder how you ever lived with out them.
The drives I've been using are an Iomega Floptical Technology and an Iomega Bernoulli Transportable. These are external SCSI devices which can be chained from an existing SCSI adapter. I have them connected to an Iomega PC1600 adapter, set up as drives E: and F:, respectively, and can now add other SCSI devices to the chain, either internal or external. The floptical drive uses 3.5" VHD (Very High Density)—disks which look just like regular 720k and 1.44 meg floppies, but hold 21 megabytes each. One of the big advantages of the floptical is that it reads and writes those old 720 and 1.44 disks, so it can be used as the only floppy drive on your system. Another advantage is that the 21 meg disks aren't a proprietary format like other removables. There are a number of companies which are a part of the FTA—Floptical Technology Association, which controls the standards to make sure floptical drives and disks are interchangeable. Because of this, the backwards compatibility to old floppies, and the low cost relative to other removable disk formats, there are those who feel floptical drives will replace the floppy drive as the standard for new systems. Currently, the best use of floptical drives is for transferring files within or between organizations which aren't connected by networks. The 21 megabyte capacity is perfect for large graphic, CAD and desktop publishing files which won't fit on regular floppies, yet the format is cheaper than other removables with larger capacities. This makes it an ideal solution for many businesses which need to transfer files between offices or to clients or contractors. It's much more economical to send 21 megs on a 3.5" disk than via modem, which would take well over 2 hours even at 28.8kpbs speeds. Flopticals have some usefulness for archiving and backing up files. Iomega's literature likes to point out the convenience of cutting down your drawers full of floppy disks to just a handful of 21 meg disks. Myself, I've got probably 30 or 40 old floppies full of who knows what, which could fit onto 3 or 4 flopticals, but I'm not sure if what I have would be worth the effort. If I ever got around to going through those disks I'd probably end up throwing them all out. As backing up, using 5 flopticals to back up a 200 meg hard drive is better than 20 1.44 meg disks, but there are even better methods out there. Tape drives? No way, I've found the ultimate backup and file archiving medium, the Iomega Bernoulli drive. The Bernoulli drive takes cartridges that are the dimensions of a 5.25" floppy disk, but much thicker—over 1/4" thick. They also have a tough, rigid case that makes them one of the most durable formats of removable storage out there. Bernoulli cartridges hold 150 megs of uncompressed data, which makes them superior to the 120 megabyte "250" QIC tape drives used by many stand-alone systems today. I have one of those tape drives, and although it's much better than using a carton full of floppies to back up my hard drive, it's a trial. It takes waaay too long to do anything with the tape drive. In order to back up on tape I usually have to start the machine formatting a tape before I leave the office at night, then do the same thing for the backup the next night. Backups that require more than one tape are even worse, and invariably cause me to lose working time. Restoring is another pain—put in the tape and wait a minute or two for the drive to get reacquainted with it, then wait 3 or 4 minutes for it to find a directory of the backup volumes on the tape, 3 or 4 minutes to get the directory of files on the tape, then 5 minutes while the drive whirs away looking for the files I want and restore them to the hard drive. Only then can I actually look at the file to discover it wasn't the one I needed. Of course, this is all assuming I didn't get the dreaded "Tape not formatted" message when I put the tape with all my backup data on it, which means I can kiss that data good-bye. In short: tape drives suck. The Bernoulli is a dream come true for backups. To back up files I simply copy them from drive C: to drive F:, and I'm done. To restore files I can browse through the directories, loading or running them as needed to make sure they're what I was looking for. Another great advantage is freedom from proprietary backup software—backup and restore files using plain old COPY from DOS or OS/2, or the Windows File Manager. Compress the files using DoubleSpace, Stacker, or PKZip if you want. Using the Bernoulli is all around faster, easier and more convenient than tape for backups, and it has other uses besides backups. I've found the Bernoulli is a great answer to hard drive cramping, since you can run programs and read data from it with ease and speed. The Iomega Bernoulli has an access time of about 18ms, light years faster than a CD-ROM, and only a little slower than the fastest hard drives. Adding a Bernoulli drive is like adding a hard drive of unlimited size. Data and programs that you don't need constantly can be installed on a Bernoulli cartridge and popped in only when needed. I've found this a great solution for those large programs which I only use occasionally like PageMaker and CorelDRAW!. These are programs I don't use very often, and find myself constantly deleting from my hard drive to make room for something new, then reinstalling them when I come across something I need them for. Now they're a moment away—I can just pull a Bernoulli cartridge off the shelf and fire the program up. This great convenience does come at a price, though. The Bernoulli drives themselves can be had for pretty reasonable street prices (???), but the cartridges are a bit high, running around $100 each. My first reaction to that price was "Ouch," but that comes from thinking of it as an oversized floppy disk. When you consider that each cartridge is 150 megs of added hard drive space it comes to $.66/meg, which is still a better bang for buck ratio than a new hard drive. The added ability of taking the disk home with you, locking it in a safe deposit box, or sending it to another office makes it a pretty good value in my book. The Iomega Floptical drive, by the way, is not quite as fast as the Bernoulli, clocking it at somewhere near 100ms and 1.5 megs per second, faster than most CD-ROM's. Installing the Iomega adapter and drives wasn't quite the picnic I hoped for. Unlike many expansion cards, the PC 1600 SCSI adapter doesn't let you set IRQ's and addresses with software, you've got to roll up your sleeves and try out different jumper combinations. Worse, the jumpers aren't even set up simply, so you can't just put the jumper on the pins labelled "IRQ 9", for instance. You've got to unfold the documentation and figure out the proper combination to jumper and unjumper "I2", "I9", "BT", "J6", and their friends. "Plug and Play" or not, I'd been hoping that most expansion card makers had learned the value of making installation easy on their customers. The documentation for the adapter and the drives is very slim, but has the information you need. Once I got past conflicting IRQ and memory addresses installing the drivers was straightforward. And once I got past that, actually using the drives needed no instructions whatsoever, since they work just like any other drive on my system. I was actually quite pleased with the driver situation. I use DOS, Windows, and OS/2 on my system, and am used to not being able to use interesting new hardware under OS/2. Most vendors of sound cards and the like don't bother supporting OS/2. But I was able to download and install Iomega drivers for OS/2, and was quickly up and running with new E: and F: drive objects. Iomega also supports Solaris, SunOS, MacIntosh and the Amiga, so they've got almost all the bases covered. While these Iomega removable drives may not earn the widespread popularity of QIC tape drives in the near future, they can quickly become essential to professionals. Their usefulness and convenience for storing and transporting large data files, archiving and backing up data, and supplementing hard drive storage can make them very economical to businesses and professionals in a short period of time. |
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