Removable Media Frequently Asked Questions List

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By: Leon Grossmann , Claus Boerschig and Bruce Boschek.

NEWS AND IMPORTANT NOTES

After; a longer period of silence IBM has released now a driver who supports ATAPI devices like Iomega's ATAPI-ZIP and the LS-120 drive. Together with the NewDasd package it will now allow SCSI and IDE/ATAPI removable media drive users (of all sorts) to gain HPFS removability, speed, and just overall native support for HPFS without requiring special drivers. These drivers will be folded into the base OS at some later date but you can get them now. See also the new ATAPI PAGE for more information.

NewDasd; becomes now older and out: IBM provides a complete support of removable media in the newest FIXPACKS , FP 35 for Warp 3 / Warp LAN Server and FP 6 for Warp 4, respectively. Don't worry about the missing support of optical disks, set simply the wellknown /of parm behind the basedev=os2dasd.dmd statement into your config.sys file and enjoy furthermore on opticals.

There; is now also an official support from IBM for HPFS386 on removable media. It works great !! Special thanks to Sam.

There is a release of new device drivers ( still BETA code) available supporting 1024 and 2048 bytes/sector optical media. A more detailed description will maybe follow into the next revision of this FAQ. Please, send us your experience you made.

Note for PP Zip drive users: You are the only ones left out here ( SyQuest has an .ADD driver for their PP drives) but if you can talk Iomega into creating an .ADD driver for your PP drive the new OS2DASD.DMD will support the PP ZIP drive too! I have emailed Iomega on this several times, only to be completely ignored. I emailed them upon learning about the new drivers by IBM and they have ignored me. Let's start an email campaign and make them listen. Read in sections 2 and 3 for more information.

NewDasd is officially available from IBM's OS/2 Device Driver Pak On Line. Furthermore, you find a good collection of removable media support, often directly from the different programmers, and more OS/2 software on our anonymous FTP sites namely

There have been a lot of questions about removable media and OS/2 lately. Especially the Zip and EZ drives. Unfortunately, IBM elected not to provide removable drive support in OS/2 Warp v4. This means that you have to find your own drivers for your drive and HPFS was not modified to accommodate removable media. This FAQ is an attempt to answer some of those questions. Note: some of this information was gleaned from the Usenet over a period of months and some of it (some of the Zip drive info) is from my personal experience. I welcome comments, suggestions, techniques, useful hints, corrections, etc. Please send comments to lgrossm@ceatlabs.okstate.edu , clabo@fmf.uni-freiburg.de , Bruce.Boschek@viro.med.uni-giessen.de.

The latest version of this FAQ ( ASCII format) can always be obtained by:


Choosing the right drive

1.1. Should I buy the EZ, the Zip, or some other drive?

To answer this question, you must first decide what you are going to do with your drive. What are your primary concerns? There are several factors which should be considered in your decision:

  • Portability
  • Price
  • Storage capacity
  • Speed
  • Compatibility
  • Data Security
Portability
For portability, the Zip is the winner. It is small, lightweight, and durable. Durability is the biggest key to the Zip drive's portability. The media in a Zip disk is flexible and can withstand the shock of being dropped repeatedly. Dropping disks is not something you *want* to do but it happens, especially when you are traveling. Size wise, my parallel port Zip drive fits nicely in the briefcase with my notebook computer. One portability complaint people have voiced is a lack of battery support for this drive. There is now a company which makes a battery pack for this drive. No other drive matches the Zip in portability. The EZ is the closest thing to the Zip but it is heavier, bulkier, and much more fragile.
Price
The EZ drive has now been discontinued, leaving the Zip drive as the only alternative under $200. Hopefully, Iomega will keep the price under $150 for their drives.
Storage Capacity
If the capacity is your driving force and you have the money to spend, one of the large capacity optical drives would be a good choice. Perhaps a PD drive would be a good price/capacity compromise. Cartridges for this drive can be purchased for ~$50 for a 650MB cardridge ($0.07/MB). For me, the price was the deciding factor. If I could have afforded one of the larger MO drives, I wouldn't have even considered a Zip drive.
Speed
This is probably the Zip drives biggest weakness. It is advertised as being as fast as a hard drive but in most cases it is too slow to be used as one. Here is where Syquest's drives shine. They have fast access times (approximately half that of the Zip drive) and has transfer rates at least twice that of the Zip drive (numbers anyone?). The speed is due to Syquest using a rigid disk in their cartridges instead of a flexible one like Iomega used. Iomega has acheived 10ms access times and 3MB/s transfer rates for the JAZ, making it a nice performer.
Compatibility
The Zip drive has the upper hand here. It was out for months and had the chance to become a pseudo standard before the EZ hit the shelf. Essentially, you are more likely to find someone else who has a Zip drive than you are to find someone with an EZ or other drive. The Zip disks are easier to find, as well. I can buy Zip disks at Wal-Mart here if I'm desperate. The EZ isn't quite so pervasive. Unless you are very lucky, any other drive is going to be relegated to mail order for cartridge purchases.
Data Security
The true nature of removable media is such that the cartridges are removed, transported, and ultimately read on different drives. The questions arise: How safe is the construction of the cartridge? How will it react to shocks and vibrations. How sensitive is it to any changes in temperature, light and dust? How reliable are the corresponding drives? How well do the cartridges and the drives work together?

A comparison of the Iomega ZIP 100 and SyQuest 3270 Types quickly shows the differences: The ZIP disk is enclosed in a massive and relatively robust diskette. The corresponding drive is built on the Bernoulli principle so that dreaded head crashes are not possible and the data on the medium is therefore relatively safe. The media are small and easily transportable. The SyQuest is of a bulky, semitransparent design which to begin with would not fit in anyone's pocket (which certainly would not be advisable in any case since doing so would assure the creation of defective sectors!!). The drive functions in an analogous manner to a hard disk so that it is by nature sensitive to shock and vibration during use. From my own experience I can say that a SyQuest is not suitable for long-term storage of important data because of an unusually high rate of defects in both, the drives and the cartridges. As a result of large construction tolerances there is also a high degree of incompatibility between drives and new cartridges. If one should come up with the idea of reading cartridges with different drives one will certainly be rewarded by numerous unreadable sectors.

I have experienced 4 MB defective sectors on disks of 250 MB total capacity. This applies to all drives of the type 3270. I do not know to what extent this relates to the EZ, but caution seems to be advisable. The only advantage of these drives is their higher performance.If, however, you need this you should consider the JAZ and forget SyQuest.

A quick summary is
If you need durability, portability, and compatibility then the Zip is a safe choice. If you need speed and price, the EZ is a good choice. If you need raw storage power, speed and capacity try the IOMEGA JAZ or go somewhere else.

1.2. Should I buy the SCSI or the Parallel Port version?

This one is easy. If you need portability between machines then you need to get the parallel port version, unless all of the computers you work with use SCSI. If you need speed, the SCSI or IDE version will be faster in most cases. Under OS/2, SCSI devices are well supported and there are many options for drivers. Parallel port drives are at the mercy of the drive manufacturer. In the case of the Zip drive, the difference in speed between a Zip hooked up to an enhanced parallel port and one hooked up to SCSI or IDE is not that great. Accessing my parallel port Zip drive on my P5-100 "eats up" all of the CPU power,though. My 486 with the SCSI Zip drive only uses about 50% of the CPU while accessing the drive and I expect the same from an IDE drive. EZ users will quickly find out that many of the speed benefits of their drives are cancelled out by the speed limitations of the parallel port. If you intend to buy an EZ drive, you should really buy the SCSI version if you want to use it to its full potential.

HPFS Support for Removable Drives

       Introduction
       How to format removable disks as HPFS and HPFS386
       Presentation and discussion of general methods
           SCSI Drives
               IBMINT13.I13 Driver
               LOCKDRV.FLT
               Syquest-hpfs.zip
               Iomega Device Drivers
               Syquest Device Drivers
               IBM's (new) drivers
           IDE and ATAPI Drives
           Parallel Port Drives
       Support of multiple devices and the use of Checkdisk after a system crash
       Booting from removable drives
       Questions
       Where can I get the drivers and utilities?
   Iomega's Zip and Jaz drives
       Obtaining the IOMEGA drivers.
       Choosing between the .FLT, the OAD, and IBM's (new) drivers.
           The OAD drivers
           The .FLT drivers
           IBM's (new) drivers
       Why is my Zip Drive so slow?
           With a Parallel Port drive using the OAD drivers.
           With the .FLT driver or no driver other than the driver for your specific SCSI card.
       Will the IDE Zip Drive work with OS/2?
       Can I format my Zip cartridge as HPFS?
       How to format successfully the JAZ HPFS
   Syquest 3270 drives and media
       Introduction
       Technical information
           Personal experiences
           Drives
           Media
           Use and suitability
       Types of devices
       Operations with various operating systems
       Interoperability
   Other Removable drives
       Can I use an Optical Drive with OS/2
       How to set up an MO drive for use with OS/2
       Background
       Installation of the syquest-hpfs.zip package
       Installation of the new IBM driver package
       Comparison of the two packages
       What other modes of operation are available for using MODs with OS/2?
       Conclusions
       Pinnacle Micro Tahoe Drive (M-O)
   Performing a backup using your Zip drive.
   Credits