When It Works, It Works
Written: Dec 15 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: hard drive speeds; removable high capacity media; extremely low prices (eBay for example)
Cons: SyQuest out of business; durability of drive; annoying startup issue
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| astar617's Full Review: SYQT SyQuest SparQ (SPARQ1AI-01) Drive |
Syquest SparQ 1.0GB Removable Drive (Internal IDE)
Grade: B
This is one of those products which, deep down inside, I know I want to give at least a B+ but can't because of one or two major issues .This drive was the answer to all of my problems when I bought it about a year ago or so. For $199 you got a removable storage solution with speeds rivaling any hard drive and VERY inexpensive disks ($39.99 each, 3 for $100). The installation process was simple to follow, and the 3.5" half-height unit (same size as a standard floppy) nestled nicely in the last open bay in my tower. In practice, the drive was pretty good: the spin-up after inserting a disk only took about 4-5 seconds, and sustained transfer rates were just as good as my non-UltraDMA/33 hard drive's (a little noisier though). Running programs and games off of the SparQ disks worked perfectly fine, unlike the SLOW Zip by Iomega. Immediately I got a 3 pack of disks, with dreams of separating my files out like never before (i.e. "Disk #1: MP3s-A", "Disk #2: MP3's-B," and so on).
Here's the downside. Conceptual problems first: this is by NO stretch of the imagination an industry standard drive. Everybody and their mother has a Zip drive, but I know maybe one other SparQ user personally. As long as, like me, you are not worried about external compatibility, you should be ok. Physically speaking, I realized early on (it wasn't in the documentation) that the drive is not recognized during the system's POST (Power On Startup Test) unless a cartridge is in the drive. Otherwise, it detects a hard disk failure and skips the drive entirely. I assume this is not a problem for the users of the ridiculously slow Parallel version, of course, but many times this aggravated me. The utilities for the drive are, well, average…nothing special at all. The only thing I use them for is to format a disk, because just like most other removable media, FORMAT.EXE is not the answer. All of this is secondary to my biggest issue: the drive stopped accepting disks, trying 3 times to spin up, then giving up and spitting the disk back out. I have yet to get another SparQ drive (only because I'm broke) but with unopened SparQs with a few disks going for around $40-$50 on eBay, I will soon. That's about how much it would cost you to send it back to SyQuest to get it serviced…wait…SyQuest is (for all intents and purposes) nonexistent! Hey, I've been building systems since I was twelve…so tech support/service plan isn't in my vocabulary anyway ;)I never had a problem with corrupt disks though.
Nevertheless, if you get a SparQ that works, you should be happy with the results. Hard drive speeds, removability, and looooooow cost (about $40 for drive, $5-$10 for disk on eBay at any given time) will make this a winner, as long as you can do without compatibility or a decent warranty.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
astar617
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Location: Boston, MA
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 48 members
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