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| In last month's NewsScan, I raved about the new SparQ drive from SyQuest,
maker of the SyJet and other removable drives. Now, thanks to a donation
from SyQuest, I actually have one to test. No, I don’t get to keep it;
it’s destined for the Alamo PC Computer Lab. But I get to try it out.
The SparQ parallel model looks a lot like its chief competitor, Iomega’s ZipPlus drive, to which we will compare it later on. The SparQ drive uses a proprietary cable that plugs into the printer port in the back of your computer. A pass-through port on the back of the drive lets you connect and use your printer when the SparQ is connected. The SparQ cartridge is slightly smaller than a Zip cartridge, although it is about twice as thick. A pack of three cartridges sells for $99, a breakthrough in cost-per-megabyte. The SparQ uses an external power transformer which is huge compared to a ZipPlus transformer, which looks like a large plug. The SparQ transformer even uses a standard removable power cord, just like your computer’s. For portability, the SparQ is definitely behind the ZipPlus drive. But in cost and performance, the SparQ is in a league of its own. The SparQ has a separate on/off switch on its left side. That’s much better than the ZipPlus drive, which makes the eject button also serve as the on/off function. So you don’t have to eject the cartridge to turn off the drive. A drop-down door in front opens the cartridge compartment, and SyQuest is quite proud of its resistance to dust and debris. To insert a cartridge, open the door, pop in a cartridge, close the door, and a green light on the front of the drive should come on to tell you the cartridge is ready for use. Unfortunately, the cartridge ready light is adjacent and identical another light that tells you when the drive is turned on. A separate eject button pops the cartridge out. Installation was straightforward, if a little different from most hardware, but I experienced a near-failure during the installation process. The separate installation guide is a poster-sized page with clear drawings explaining each step of the process. On the back of the sheet is a trouble-shooting guide with several possible problems and their solutions explained. Installing the drive is just a matter of unpacking it, connecting it to your computer’s parallel port, turning on the drive (the separate on/off switch is appreciated), and inserting the cartridge. Then place the installation diskette in the floppy drive and the SparQ Starter Cartridge in the SparQ drive. The floppy disk contains the Visit program that, like the Zip Guest program, lets you access the contents of a removable drive from the computer. Most of the software that’s included with the SparQ drive comes on the Starter Cartridge, not a CD-ROM. That’s logical when you think that a SparQ cartridge holds more than a CD-ROM! There are separate routines for installing the drive with various operating systems: Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 3.1. I decided to install the software on a computer that could benefit greatly from a large removable hard drive: a laptop computer. The computer uses a 133 MHz Pentium with 16 MB of RAM and a 1.4 GB hard drive. A couple of conditions might have challenged the robustness of the installation program: the ZipPlus software was already installed and was left in place, and even more interesting, the computer was running a beta version of Windows 98! When I first went through the installation process, I was dismayed to see the drive would not recognize the cartridge and come online. I reinstalled the software, but no luck; it looked dead. Then I read the troubleshooting guide and noticed instructions to push the cartridge down inside its chamber to seat it properly. That fixed the problem! The drive spun into action, although somewhat noisily. But once up to speed, it was only slightly noisier than a ZipPlus drive. After it goes into a “rest” mode, it’s noisy as it spins back to operating speed. SyQuest includes lots of software with the SparQ on the Starter Cartridge: 728 MB to be exact! That means the Starter Cartridge is nearly full, with “only” 228 MB free. Of course, that’s equal to over seven Zip cartridges. But don’t plan to use the “free” cartridge to store data; you’ll need to invest in a separate, empty cartridge for that. Once installed and working, the SparQ acts just like another hard
drive, with a drive letter that follows your permanent hard drive. Curious,
I opened Control Panel to see how the SparQ appeared there, and discovered
a new option in the Performance dialog box under the System icon. This
option lets you establish a cache for removable drives, a nice feature
to make such drives faster.
SoftwareSo what is all that on your SparQ Starter Cartridge? One of the most important items is a backup program which lets you use your SparQ as a backup drive. While a SparQ may not be the most cost-effective backup drive, if you want to use it primarily as a hard drive, there’s no reason not to use it as a backup drive also. SyQuest provides a program called NovaDisk SE from Novastor, a leader in backup software. It looks like a full-function backup program, which lets you backup and restore from a SparQ drive, and even make differential backups (only the files new or changed since the last backup). If you want a more powerful backup program, Novastor offers an upgrade to their professional backup program, whose extra features may be worth the $30 cost. Windows 98’s backup program lets you backup to recognizable drives, so you can use that when Windows 98 ships.I used the NovaDisk SE and SparQ combination to back up my laptop’s hard drive. It was very fast: 24 MB per second; much faster than a parallel port tape backup. It only took 21 minutes and 53 seconds to backup 551 MB of data. The backup file was not much smaller than the data itself, even though file compression was turned on. Besides NovaDisk SE, another program called EZBackup is included;
an older backup program, probably. Other software includes a three-month
subscription to the SegaSoft HEAT Network (games); Serif’s DrawPlus 3.0
drawing and illustration program, a subscription to SPRYNet (an Internet
Service Provider); WebVCR, which lets you “record” Internet pages as you
go browsing and replay them later (possibly useful to Internet classes);
and a McAfee program called WebScan, which is an add-on for browsers and
mail programs, and presumably scans files or e-mail that you get from the
Internet. A collection of utilities rounds out the software that comes
with the SparQ drive.
Comparison to Iomega ZipPlus driveSparQ’s most popular competitor is the ZipPlus drive. Although its removable cartridge holds only 100 MB of data, that’s still a lot, and the Zip definitely is synonymous with removable cartridge drives. But in terms of cost, the SparQ is a better buy. How about performance? Fortunately, PC Magazine tested both drives in their April 21, 1998 issue. The SparQ is a much better performer. An example: the SparQ made a copy of an 82 MB TIF file in 3 minutes and 3 seconds, while the ZipPlus needed 10 minutes and 51 seconds. The SparQ drive claims an access time of 12 milliseconds, while the ZipPlus’s is 29 ms. The parallel interface makes the actual file access even longer.The ZipPlus drive automatically ejects its cartridges when you shut down the computer, often clear out of the drive. The SparQ drive doesn’t eject its cartridge until you tell it to. Nice. The software that comes with a ZipPlus drive is marginally more useful, but then some of it (RecordIt) doesn’t work. A toss-up. One factor I will be most interested in is reliability. Iomega
claims only a 1% problem rate with Zip drives, but I have had two drives
and seven cartridges fail with the so-called “click of death” syndrome.
This does not make me a big Iomega fan.
Bottom LineLet me close with a quote from the PC Magazine article that pretty well sums things up. The SparQ “. . . is a cutting-edge drive that offers the best price/performance mix on the market today.” I want one. No, two.Larger computer and electronics stores carry the SparQ drive, and look for its popularity to expand its appeal. List and street prices are $200. Cartridges are $40 for one or $100 for three. SyQuest Technology, Inc. is at 47071 Bayside Parkway, Fremont, CA 94538; telephone 800-245-2278; Web site http://www.syquest.com. Vade Forrester is a ne’er-do-well who wastes lots of time with computers. |
The
SparQ drive is a hard drive that uses removable 1 GB cartridges. Although
the cartridges are removable, they are true hard drives, with speeds almost
as fast as permanently mounted drives. The SparQ comes in two versions:
one with a parallel port connection and one with an EIDE connection. Each
sells for $200. The EIDE connection drive, designed to mount internally
in your computer, provides fastest throughput, while the parallel connection
is easier to install and will appeal to laptop users, even though it’s
not as fast as the EIDE drive.