Jaz drive facts for kids
The Jaz drive was a special storage system. It was like a removable hard disk drive. The Iomega company sold it from 1995 to 2002.
After their popular Zip drive, Iomega made the Jaz drive. The Zip drive stored data on special floppy disks. It held 100 MB, then 250 MB, and later 750 MB. The Jaz drive first came out in 1995. Each disk could hold 1 GB of data. In 1998, a new Jaz drive came out. Its disks could hold 2 GB!
The Jaz drive used a special connection called SCSI. You could get them inside your computer or as external boxes. Iomega also made special cards for PCs. These were called Jaz Jet cards. They also made adapters to connect the Jaz drive to other ports. The Jaz Traveller connected to a parallel port. Later, they made adapters for USB and Firewire.
What Went Wrong?
Some early Jaz drives had problems. They could get too hot. Sometimes, a disk would get stuck inside. It would make a clicking sound. People called this the "click of death". Trying to force the disk out could break both the drive and the disk.
Jaz drives used hard disk technology. This meant they could be damaged by dust. Dust or tiny bits of dirt could get inside the drive. This happened through a small hole where the motor spun the disks. Any dust on the outside of the disk case could also get in. Also, the metal door on the disk could wear down the plastic. This created tiny pieces of plastic. These pieces could cause problems with the read/write heads.
The parts that spun the disks could also vibrate a lot. Iomega added a special part to stop this vibration. But this part didn't work as well over time. This could make the two disks inside lose their alignment. Then the disk would not work anymore. Small plastic tabs on the bottom of a Jaz disk could also break. If they broke, the disk could not spin up. Some drives also had problems with their internal software, called firmware.
What Came After?
Later, the Iomega REV drive tried to be like the Jaz drive. It aimed for the same type of users. The REV drive used some ideas from older IBM disk drives. These ideas helped make the drives more reliable. They also helped the read/write heads move faster.
However, neither the Jaz drive nor the REV drive put the read/write heads inside the removable disk cartridge. The REV drive did move the motor into the cartridge. Later, the RDX Technology drive put the heads inside the cartridge. This made the RDX cartridge work more like a modern external hard drive. This made it much more reliable.
See also
In Spanish: Unidad Jaz para niños
- 64DD, an extension port disk drive add-on for the Nintendo 64
- Castlewood Orb Drive, a competing drive system
- SyQuest Technology, maker of the competing SyJet and SparQ drive
