modern removable media drives

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Fri Nov 13 12:19:25 1998

"Hans Franke" <franke_at_sbs.de> wrote:
> And dust particles will work like sandpaper and grind the
> disk surface

Which is why the inside of the disk jacket has material to sweep up
dust and keep it from the disk surface.

Geez, people, I never claimed that you could dump huge piles of dust, smoke,
dirt, and sand on the floppy disk and expect it to work for more than five
seconds. My point was that you don't have to be super-careful with them. One
dust particle isn't going to ruin the disk (at least not very quickly). You
don't have to handle floppy media in a cleanroom. However, one dust or smoke
particle *IS* enough to cause a head crash in a Winchester drive.

> there are 4 basic technologies for the head/surface
> management of disk Magnetic:
>
> 1. Fixed head over hard surface
> 2. Flying head over fixed surface (Winchester)
> 3. Fixed head over flexible surface (Bernulli)
> 4. Head grinding over flexible surface (Floppy)
> (also tapes go into #4 but since the head surface
> speed is only slow, the effekt is less visible)

Depends on the kind of tape. Helical scan tape has this effect
*MORE* than floppy drives, because the head-to-tape speed is much
higher.

> And we are talking about 2 vs. 4 (head flying over hard
> surface vs. head on flexible surface). The other ones
> have been used in several drive types thru the past. And
> all in encapsulated (seled) and 'free' environment.

That's my point. The Syquest SyJet and Sparq drives, and the Iomgea
Jaz drive, appear to use what you have listed as configuration 2.
They have to, in order to get .75 to 1.0G density per platter.
Configuration 1 can't get the head close enough to the media. And even
if they did use configuration 1 and get the head close enough to the
media, then it would be just as susceptible to foreign particles as
configuration 2.

That's precisely why they are so f*&#ing unreliable.

Out of over 30 SyJet and Sparq drives, I don't think we've had a single
one last more than 100 cartridge insert/eject cycles.

So everybody can stop posting about how wonderful the 44M, 88M, and 230M
drives are, because it is completely unrelated to this issue. I've already
stated that I've never seen this problem with the 88M drives.
Received on Fri Nov 13 1998 - 12:19:25 GMT