Low-Cost High-Performance Removable Storage

SyQuest SparQ drive

• If you plan to store tens of gigabytes of data, Castlewood's Orb drive will probably be more economical because its 2.2 GB disks cost less per gigabyte than SparQ disks.
• If you're using an old PC that doesn't recognize large hard disks, you might need a drive of lower capacity, like SyQuest's EZFlyer drive or SQ3270 drive.
• If you need a Mac-compatible drive, you probably need one that's readily available with a SCSI interface. In this case, you'll have to choose between something more expensive, like SyQuest's SyJet drive or Castlewood's Orb drive, or a drive of lower capacity, like SyQuest's EZFlyer drive or SQ3270 drive.
• OS/2 users will find that the parallel-port model of the SparQ drive is not supported, and the EIDE model is recognized only as a fixed drive.
• If you want a portable drive, the SparQ may not be the best choice, because the external model uses a slow parallel-port interface. It's probably worthwhile to pay more for an external SyJet drive or Orb drive with a faster interface. Avatar's 250 MB Shark drive could also be a better choice: it has less capacity, but compared to the SparQ it's more compact, less expensive, and possibly more rugged, and it can be used with a PC Card connector for better performance with notebook computers.
• If you want to exchange high-capacity disks easily with other computer users, you might find Iomega's popular (but more expensive) Jaz drive more useful.
• If you plan to store less than 120 MB per disk, or less than a few hundred megabytes in all, you can save money by buying SyQuest's EZ135 drive or even an older drive that uses 5.25" cartridges; but you'll be sacrificing speed, because the SparQ's EIDE interface transfers data more quickly than drives of lower capacity.

Compatible cartridges

• SyQuest 1.0GB cartridges

Technical summary

• Manufacturer: SyQuest Technology, now called SYQT
• Manufacturer's product information: http://www.syqt.com/products/m_sparq.html
• Average seek time: 12 milliseconds
• Sustained data transfer rate: depends on model -- see table below

Availability

There are two models of the SparQ drive. Notice the large difference in data transfer rates, which is due to the inherent limitations of PC parallel ports:

Model	Sustained data transfer rate	Price range
internal EIDE	3.7 to 6.9 MB/s	not yet determined
external parallel	approx. 0.9 MB/s	$49.50

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