USB powered zip 250 started eating zip100 disks! Aaaargh!

  • Thread starter Thread starter jonny_morrisuk
  • Start date Start date
J

jonny_morrisuk

Hi,

Is this the right group for this? Anyway, just today my USB zip250
drive decided to ruin two of my zip100 disks (it has been working fine
up until now), I am very reluctant to put in another zip disk to
confirm it is the drive - I have also got a scsi zip100 drive which I
have used to check and long-format my other zip disks, so I know they
are OK (as is my scsi zip100 drive). Is my zip250 drive just kaput or
what? Anyone else had this happen?

When I try to format the two disks using my zip100 drive, they fail to
format and media life is reported by iomegaware as 48% and 50% (were
previously reported as 85% before I tried to reformat in the zip100,
but after they got chewed - I didn't check them before that).

One other thing I'm not too sure of - why won't a zip250 drive long
format a zip100 disk? Is it because it is USB powered, or that it just
can't handle the smaller disk capacity?

Thanks for any help!
 
Is this the right group for this? Anyway, just today my USB zip250
drive decided to ruin two of my zip100 disks (it has been working fine
up until now), I am very reluctant to put in another zip disk to
confirm it is the drive - I have also got a scsi zip100 drive which I
have used to check and long-format my other zip disks, so I know they
are OK (as is my scsi zip100 drive). Is my zip250 drive just kaput or
what? Anyone else had this happen?

When I try to format the two disks using my zip100 drive, they fail to
format and media life is reported by iomegaware as 48% and 50% (were
previously reported as 85% before I tried to reformat in the zip100,
but after they got chewed - I didn't check them before that).
Click to expand...

If the disks actually got "chewed", then they would likely wreck any
drive in which you tried to use them subsequently.
One other thing I'm not too sure of - why won't a zip250 drive long
format a zip100 disk? Is it because it is USB powered, or that it just
can't handle the smaller disk capacity?
Click to expand...

The tracks on the 100MB disks are much wider than the heads on a 250MB
drive can write, so the drive has to make several passes to fill out
each track when writing. This makes writing to a 100MB disk in a
250MB drive *very* slow. Long formatting also involves verifying the
integrity of the disk surface, and I don't think the narrow heads on a
250MB drive could do that reliably for a 100MB disk (it would take an
exceedingly long time to even attempt it).

I don't think it is a good idea to be writing to 100MB disks in a
250MB drive on a regular basis.
 
Hi,
If the disks actually got "chewed", then they would likely wreck any
drive in which you tried to use them subsequently.
Click to expand...

Well, not literal physical damage, just an expression.

I don't think it is a good idea to be writing to 100MB disks in a
250MB drive on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

Hmm, so perhaps my disks were being gradually degraded by the 250MB
writing and I just hadn't noticed. I will certainly bare this in mind
for the future, and perhaps invest in a second 100MB scsi zip drive and
some 250MB disks for use in the other one. Thanks!
 
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