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Two years ago Iomega began shipping the Zip and Jaz hard-disk drives. More than 10 million of the 100-megabyte (Mb) Zip drives have been shipped and one million of the high-end, 1-gigabyte (gb) Jaz drives are in use.

 The success of these two products has prompted a resurgence of interest in hard-drive technology to the point where some of the most visible booths at Comdex were for makers of removable hard drives, in particular SyQuest and Iomega.

 SyQuest launched the SparQ 1 gb removable hard-disk drive which promises to retail for US$199 - well below the $299 and above that Jaz models sell for - with media prices under $40 for each 1 gb disk, about a third of the price of media for the Jaz drive.

 The SparQ ships as an external parallel port drive or an internal EIDE (enhanced integrated device electronics) drive.

 Gary Marks, executive vice-president for marketing at SyQuest, said the new drive would be sold on its price, ease of use and installation.

 He believed the low price of the SparQ media would help ensure widespread penetration, even though SyQuest was late with a drive designed to compete with the Jaz.

 Mr Marks pointed to the newer technology in the SparQ. The main difference between the drives is that the Jaz uses two disk platters with four magnetic heads while the SparQ uses one platter with two heads to cut the cost and complexity of the drives and media.

 Iomega showed its 2 gb Jaz drive. The new drive offers double the capacity and a 40 per cent improvement in performance, according to Karen Anderson, Iomega senior product manager.

 She said that even with the SparQ's attractive price, the Jaz drive probably would keep its hold on the high-end professional market.

 The main reason was that the external unit - by far the most popular version of the Jaz drive - was available using a SCSI (small computer serial interface) while the SparQ external unit used a parallel interface, reducing performance and throughput.

 'We are targeting the high-performance market,' Ms Anderson said. 'In 20 months, one million units have shipped. The Jaz drive has grown faster in 20 months than Camcorders.'  Iomega has achieved the improved capacity and performance in the new Jaz drives through improvements in magnetic head recording, effectively doubling the capacity of the drive.

 The 2 gb Jaz drive is priced at HK$5,300 for the external model and HK$4,480 for an internal drive. Shipments start in December. Media costs HK$1,340 per disk or HK$3,540 for three.

 SyQuest previewed its 4.7, high-performance Quest drive, which is expected to be available next year.

 The Quest drive will offer 4.7 gb on each disk at a price of about four US cents per Mb, according to Stephen Haight, product marketing manager for the drive. SyQuest aims to have the drive accepted into mainstream business use as well as in high-end applications such as video production and mastering for digital video discs (DVD).

 Iomega said more than 10 million units of the 100 Mb Zip drive had been shipped and that Zip drives would appear on the market as bootable a:drives in more PCs, moving the traditional 1.44 boot floppy drive to second stage as the b:drive.

 It demonstrated the 40 Mb Clik! drive, to appear in the second half of next year.

 The Clik! drive is targeted at the mobile, hand-held device market, including personal digital assistants, digital cameras and digital voice recorders, where ease of data transfer between the device and a PC is a high priority.

 The Clik! drive will sport small disks which are less than two inches square and will sell for a suggested retail price of US$9.95 each.



Cheaper SyQuest challenges Jaz in battle of the hard disks