Sorry. A Zip drive just doesn't hold enough these days... especially if you are backing up a multi-gig hard drive. And the CD-R's take "forever" to back up only a fraction of a gig. That's why I've been so excited about the promise of the Castlewood ORB drive.

Two gigabyte removable storage with "hard drive" speed for $199? And only $30 per 2 gig cartridge? Sounds too good to be true? Check out the results of my speed tests:

 

 

(Note the speed difference below using three different SCSI controllers on the Orb.)

 

Here's an interesting test. I burned a CD with a bunch of files. Then I dropped the same folders on the Orb drive. Obviously, CD-ROM's make more reliable backup media but they are limited to 650MB. The Orb presents an interesting alternative for backing up a big chuck of data in a big hurry.

 

 

Conclusion: Although not quite as fast as a typical sealed hard drive, the Orb is faster than any other removable, recordable medium I've tested. (See comment below about Jaz 2 gig.)

For reliability, it's hard to beat a CD-ROM burner but the Orb is an interesting alternative for quick backup or transfer of data by the gigabyte.

 

READER QUESTIONS & COMMENTS

• QUESTION: "How about the 2 gig Jaz drive?"
  ANSWER: I didn't have a 2 gig Jaz to test, although I would be happy to test one when if Iomega sends me one. They claim an average sustained transfer rate of 7.4MB/sec. I don't know how they came up with that figure but I bet it includes the use of their recommended optional Ultra SCSI controller. Even if it was equal in speed to the Orb, it costs more ($450 with controller vs $200) and the cartridges cost a lot more ($125 vs $30). And read these links about unreliable Jaz cartridges and unimpressive speed.
• QUESTION: "Do you plan to keep the Orb? Do you recommend it?"
  ANSWER: I've decided to keep it. It saved my bacon when my wife's PowerBook refused to boot. I booted from my 8.6 CD but was able to run Norton from the Orb. Even after fixing the directory, things were degrading fast, with corrupted files and all. I was able to quickly back up over 1 gig of critical project data to the Orb before the internal hard drive became completely compromised. I've also used the Orb as a "staging area" for a special collection of applications and documents before burning on a CD-ROM, thereby not disturbing the organization of my regular hard drive.
• COMMENT: Orb scsi manual says the following:
  "CAUTION! For best data integrity, DO NOT connect your ORB SCSI Drive on the same SCSI chain as scanners, printers or devices other than hard drives, CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs."

  Test Configurations & Procedures

Now don't go saying it's unfair to test on different computers. Even when running the same drive on a 266MHz vs 466MHz Beige G3, there was less than a 10% difference in MacBench and no significant difference in the HDT test. The big difference is seen by changing the type of SCSI controller.

• All drives were reformatted before the tests were run.
• MacBench 5.0 attempts to simulate a mix of real world disk operations. The disk cache was set to 512K instead of the default setting to minimize effects of caching.
• FWB's Hard Disk Tookit has an excellent Bench Test module that can give accurate information on Sustained Read/Write, Random Read/Write, Transactions/Second, etc. (There's a special price of $35.95 if you go to the Special Order page and inter "6sum99" in the discount code field.)

A big MAHALO to...

...Interex for the use of the CarrierZIF G3/400

...MacGurus for the use of the Initio Miles Bluenote Fast SCSI-2 Card

...Nicad for the use of the Grappler 906 SCSI Card & Yosemite G3/450

...Blaine & Ken at STARBULLETIN.COM for use of their Jaz drive & G3/300 MT

...David Tasaka of Lyte-On for the use of his Beige G3 DT with the FireBall 4 gig IDE

A big NO THANK YOU to...

...Castlewood who offered a 18 months of excuses instead of an evaluation unit. I had to buy an Orb drive to get the test results. I purchased it from Cyberian Outpost since they shipped it free and offer full refund within 30 days. But I'm not sending it back. I'm hooked.