important notes for iomega jaz or zip users

[wirefall]

Hi folks,

some important findings for iomega stuff users, maybe not everybody is aware of:

A lot of people like zip and/or jaz drives for several reasons. But often people claim about faulty media, lost data and so on.

The solution: Use them with iomega tools / iomegaware. With this very smart software you can check AND refresh your zip/jaz media regarding the read/write-livespan and even the formatting-livespan, it shows up in percent. If livespan is low, just format them and you can use a media again like new, provided the formatting-live-span is still high enough.
Before I used iomega tools I've had several of the obvious suspicious faults with iomega you could easily find in every forum regarding old samplers and so on. For example just make a backup copy from or with a jaz media was more like gambling than a reproducible procedure, bit by bit. Now with this software everything is absolutely fine. I could even bring old and very faulty media back to life via the "refreshing" procedure described above.

The technical explanation behind this story: Every iomega media has got quite several spare sectors. If livespan from the used sectors has become low, iomega tools is able to switch from bad to good (spar-)sectors.

BTW, I use iomega tools 6.4.3 with iomega driver 5.1 on a Mac IIci, Mac OS 7.61

Have fun!

[Elmbeatz]

Are those tools also available for system 6.x?

[wirefall]

Don't think so, as JAZ had been introduced in 1995 and Mac OS 6 is around 1988 til 1990. I cannot check compatibility, as I don't have OS 6. But what about buying an old mac with OS 7, which are rather cheap today?