SyQuest EZ135 Page

DISCLAIMER:
This page represents my personal experiences with the SyQuest EZ135
I am an independent consultant and have no affiliation with SyQuest or IOMega

The Issues

I have read rumors about the EZ 135 media. I decided to conduct my own limited tests to determine the validity of these rumors. I might add that before I conducted these tests, I was a staunch supporter of SyQuest, and have recommended the SyQuest EZ135 Drive to a number of people - my professional reputation is on the line. I would dearly love to see these problems solved by SyQuest, and the primary purpose of this page is to determine whether SyQuest is seriously trying to solve the problem, or just covering it up.

You can either wade through my discussion of the matter, or if you are the impatient type, you can jump straight to the conclusion.

These are the issues I wish to address:

1. Substandard Platters
2. New Case design
3. Spin up Problems (under construction)
4. Write Protect Errors (under construction)
5. Windows 95 Support (under construction)

Issue #1 - Substandard Platters

Rumor: SyQuest is knowingly using defective platters.

I have read that SyQuest is using rejected 270 platters to make the EZ135 Cartridges, and formatting out bad sectors. I have also read that the primary difference between the 270 and the 135 is that the 135 uses only one side of the platter.

My Test: I examined nineteen (19) EZ135 cartridges, all purchased recently.

The cartridges were from a variety of sources. Five (5) of the cartridges were of the new style, and Fourteen (14) were of the old style. I visually examined the platters (no I didn't open the cartridge), and I formatted the disks and used ScanDisk to do a surface scan. Then I filled the disks with data, and used ScanDisk again.

Results: Slightly over 50% latent failure rate.

I had hoped to prove to myself that the defects were all on the unused side of the platter. When I first started the test, I had not yet encountered any errors on any cartridges, and had noticed the visible defect only on cartridge #14 (pictured). I was confident that I would find no defects (wishful thinking). The four oldest cartridges that I have, and the ones that have been used the most, are still good,

Out of 19 disks, 9 were defective. Of these, 6 had visible defects on the top (unused) surface of the platter. (see figure 1). All 6 with the visible defects were of the old style and were from the same source. What is strange is that the SQPREP utility did not find a single bad block on any of them! Five of the disks were so bad that the drive just hung up when it encountered the defect, and on many of the defective disks, there was an audible scraping sound (not just head chatter) as head approached the first bad cluster.

What is really strange is that all 19 disks formatted out to the full capacity, and ScanDisk did not find any surface defects on the first scan. Some of the disks that had very noticeable defects still passed ScanDisk and the SQPREP Utility. ScanDisk found errors and claimed to repair them on some of the disks, yet reported 0 bad blocks. There is one cartridge (#12, Old Style) with a visible defect that still has no errors.

The bad clusters are at different locations on each defective cartridge, and they are consistent, not intermittent. For example, cartridge #18 (New style) fails on Cluster 42690 - every time. Cartridge #13 (Old style) fails on Cluster 39553 - every time. That would seem to rule out systematic problems in the drive mechanism.

Other Possible factors: I ruled out drive orientation and harsh environment

Drive orientation: I tried using the drive vertically and horizontally, and that had no effect. The drive has ample airspace on all sides, and is on a hardwood surface.

Harsh environment: I removed the drive from all possible electromagnetic interference, and that had no effect. As far as I can determine, the cartridges are completely free of environmental contamination. The room is kept at 73-78 degrees Fahrenheit, and there is 24 hour air filtration. There is no source of vibration.

Conclusion: Rumors about defective platters appear to be true.

It would appear that SyQuest indeed uses rejected platters, and contrary to their claims, the defects do not get formatted out, and may actually damage the head. If my results are anywhere near the norm, then SyQuest is in DEEP DEEP trouble! I would strongly recommend AGAINST buying an EZ135 Drive until SyQuest has solved this problem. I hope SyQuest solves this problem quickly - I have come to rely heavily on my EZ135, and I don't want to have to buy one of those glorified floppy drives.

I have shipped 5 of the cartridges back to SyQuest, but I will have to limp along on the others until I get new cartridges from SyQuest because there are no cartridges available anywhere.

When the new cartridges arrive from SyQuest, I will put them through a rigorous examination, and post the results on this page. I hope for SyQuest's sake, and for my own sake that they pass.

Issue #2 - New Case Design

By "case" I mean the protective case that the cartridge is stored in, not the shell of the cartridge itself.

The old case was a folding padded case. The new case is a jacket. I have read a report that the EZ135 cartridge is much more fragile than the Zip cartridge, but the padded case offset this difference. Well, no more padded case, so now the EZ135 is susceptible to damage from being dropped on the floor, even when in the case.
I suspect that this new case design is in response to the complaint that the EZ135 case would not fit in a shirt pocket, whilst the Zip case would. The new EZ135 case fits in some of my shirt pockets, but not others.
My major complaint about the new case is that is very easy to damage the cartridge just by inserting it into the case! (see figure 2) If you don't get the cartridge and case aligned perfectly with each other, part of the opening in the case can slide between the cartridge door and the cartridge wall. If you push it hard enough, you could destroy the door mechanism on the cartridge.
I get the feeling that SyQuest is going to be hearing a lot about this problem!

Links to other EZ135 Information

• Download Updated Drivers/Utilities (from SyQuest's ftp site)
• List of Serial Numbers of Bad Cartridges
• SyQuest EZ135 Drive by Jimmy Wu
• MacUser / January 1996 Review
• PC Magazine -- March 12, 1996 (Review)
• System Solutions - SyQuest EZ135 Drives - December 13,1995 (Review)
• IOMega Zip vs. SyQuest EZ135 (Review by Florin Neumann)
• K.O.P.C.O. - removable storage (May 25, 1996)
• "Which SyQuest Should I Buy?" FAQ (A KJ InfoBooth Link Page)
• Is SyQuest Hiding from Investors? by Louis Corrigan

SyQuest's Response

(no official response yet, but they have inquired about it, and have promised to respond)

Updates

• August 15:
• E-mailed the Webmaster of the SyQuest Home Page, notifying him of this page.
• August 16:
• Called SyQuest Tech Support and notified them of this page. I invited them to respond to these issues.
• A senior SyQuest Technician called me and inquired about this Web page. He said that he would pass the information along to the Webmaster.
• August 17:
• Cartridge #19, the newest of the cartridges tested failed on Cluster 46465 after being put into service. This brings the total to 10 out of 18, or 55.56% failure rate. The new style cartridges now have a higher failure rate than the old style: 60% failure rate (3/5) for the new style, 50% failure rate (7/14) for the old style. This surprised me since there are no visible defects on the new style cartridges.
• August 19:
• I contacted the person who bought the cartridges with the black spots for me. He had bought 10 for me and 10 for himself. He had also knew someone else who had bought some from the same batch. He has a SCSI EZ135, and his friend has an Parallel EZ135. Both of them have had problems with the cartridges. A cartrige that caused ScanDisk to hang on the SCSI EZ135 was tested on the Parallel EZ135. ScanDisk did not hang, but found numerous bad blocks. I have asked him to write up a full report.
• August 21:
• Cartridge #16 started having scraping sounds - not chatter, but definite scraping sounds. ScanDisk had several places it stopped momentarily while doing a surface scan, somewhere around cluster 43000, but completed with no bad blocks found.
• I received email from SyQuest inquiring about my defective cartridges.
• August 22:
• I took my SCSI EZ135, and cartridge #13 (old style) to a friend with a Power Mac. On my PC, this cartridge had failed ScanDisk, but twice passed the SQPREP utility with 0 bad blocks. On the Power Mac, the cartridge failed repeated attempts to initialize and format it. At first, the Mac would not even boot up with the cartridge in the drive. Although we did finally get the cartridge to mount, when it was accessed, the system crashed.
• August 23:
• Received the first batch of replacement cartridges from SyQuest on time. So far, there have not been any problems with the replacements.
• August 26:
• One of the replacement cartridges from SyQuest failed on Cluster 27585. It had an ID (Lot?) number of 8862806KS. All of the other replacements had either ID# 8855104ES or ID# 8863006KS. None of the cartridges in those two lots have failed yet.
• August 27:
• SyQuest called today. Apparently there is a bad batch of drives that hang up when encountering bad blocks on the cartridges. This problem prevents SQPREP and ScanDisk from properly formatting out the bad blocks. SyQuest is shipping another drive for me to test the cartridges that caused problems with my current drive. When that test is completed, SyQuest will replace all the cartridges that caused problems. Hopefully, I will get an official response from SyQuest at that time.
• August 29:
• I received the replacement drive. I took a cartridge that caused problems in the old drive, and tested it in the new one. I encountered the same problems as before: ScanDisk hung up at the same place, SQPREP paused 5 seconds when it got to that spot, and then continued, reporting no bad blocks.
• SyQuest called again today. They said that the utilities that came with my EZDrive are old, and I need to download the new utilities, which may be able to format out the bad blocks. I downloaded the new utilities, and will test them later.
• August 30 (there's some good news and some bad news):
• First the Bad News: I installed the latest SyQuest SCSI Utilities for Windows 95 - sort of. Actually, some of those utilities (the ones that I really needed) are DOS programs written to behave under Windows 95 (the old DOS utilities caused the system to hang). The new utilities will, however, run in a window, and I was able to use Sound Recorder to record the sound the drive was making while the surface analysis was underway. Don't try this unless you have a Pentium 66 or better!
  
  During the installation, I was prompted to put a cartridge in the drive, so I put a brand new (remanufactured?) cartridge in. I got an error message saying that either I had an unknown media format, or that the disk was write protected. I tried an old disk and got the same thing. At that point, I called SyQuest again. They told me to ignore the message and continue with the installation. They had no explanation of why the installation program thought that I had a write protected disk.
• Now for the Good News: The "Surface Analysis" option in the Diagnostics menu of the SyQuest SCSI Prep Utility somehow fixed the defective cartridges - even though it reported no bad blocks. Since some of those cartridges made a lot of noise, the SyQuest engineer conceded that they would probably go bad again. But for now, I am able to store data on those cartridges and ScanDisk finds no errors. I have already recieved replacement cartridges, and as soon as I get all my data transferred to the new cartridges, the cartridges that caused problems are going back.
• Beware! (more bad news): When you format a cartridge with the SyQuest SCSI Prep Utilitiy, it will ask you if you want to copy a driver to CONFIG.SYS. If you are using Windows 95 DO NOT! After you say no, it will complain - just ignore it. It will also ask you to reboot your machine. In other words, the latest release is still not fully Win95 aware.

Since August 16, 1996, there have been  visitors to this page.

James P. Henley Jr. (ZooWeb@aol.com)

This page was last updated on August 29, 1996