[MacNN Staff]

This AM I tried to place an order for some Imation SuperDisk Drives for some clients. I was told by two distributors, who were out of stock, that they have been discontinued. The third distributor had stock and I placed the order. Asking if he had heard of them being discontinued, I was told that they are being discontinued but that a replacement SKU number was not available.

I contacted Imation to get more information about the product availability and was told that the manufacturing was being converted to a slimmer product (a half height drive). They expect that with the supplies of drive en route to distribution, and the stock currently available, they should have enought to last through the 1st quarter of 2001.

According to my source, Apple will continue to have them available through the end of 2001 on the On-Line Store.

Imation wants to get out of the hardware sales (they are outsourced from Panasonic) and expect that Panasonic and perhaps others will market these new drives (and most certainly) as USB externals.

I was also told that there is no official release date for new half height.

As for warranty service, Imation should have sufficient supply to fufill any claims that arise until sometime in 2002.

I am a little concerned about this situation, that although not immediate, supplies could well become constrained. For us, USB SuperDisks are an essential product. The alternative, consisting of both a floppy drive and a Zip Drive, will be considerably more expensive for our clients.

Frank Rezny
Apple Solution Expert
President, HyperSoft MedWorks Inc. http://24.112.89.76

I live about 12 miles from Imation's main manufacturing plant in southern California. They are closing this plant, and rumor has it they are moving remaining manufacturing to Mexico. Perhaps this is a contributing factor in their changing (or eliminating) hardware. FWIW.

[mr100percent]

If only they weren't so darn expensive compared to a zip drive.

[tombarta]

"If only they weren't so darn expensive compared to a zip drive."
What's your data worth? Zip Drive reliability is pretty bad. And a nice thing about the iMation option is that if you are current (OS 9), you need install no software to use it, out of the box. I like mine.

[Andrew [Not Registered]]

Originally posted by tombarta:
And a nice thing about the iMation option is that if you are current (OS 9), you need install no software to use it, out of the box.

You don't with a (USB) Zip drive either.

Andrew

[This message has been edited by Andrew [Not Registered] (edited 10-27-2000).]

How about the fact that a USB SuperDisk (or an internal one for that matter) won't run with extensions off...this is a problem for some types of repair actions, especially with a PowerBook and a VST expansion bay SuperDisk drive. Zip has the same problem. The one advantage to Zip other than its pervasiveness is that it is MUCH faster the SuperDisk, which is just ridiculously and painfully slow. YUCK!

[RoofusPennymore]

On the otherhand, if you have a powerbook and you also need a regular floppy drive, a SuperDisk drive has works double duty.

Originally posted by bryguy78:
How about the fact that a USB SuperDisk (or an internal one for that matter) won't run with extensions off...this is a problem for some types of repair actions, especially with a PowerBook and a VST expansion bay SuperDisk drive. Zip has the same problem. The one advantage to Zip other than its pervasiveness is that it is MUCH faster the SuperDisk, which is just ridiculously and painfully slow. YUCK!

But a SuperDisk drive is MUCH faster at reading floppy disks than a floppy drive. I don't find SuperDisk to be that much slower than zip, but I still have 1st gen zip drives.

[joe]

Originally posted by bryguy78:
The one advantage to Zip other than its pervasiveness is that it is MUCH faster the SuperDisk, which is just ridiculously and painfully slow. YUCK!

The original SuperDisk was slow as molasses. But it was replaced by the 2x SuperDisk which is easily as fast as a Zip 100. And the SD has an extra 20megs, smaller profile (less than 2 zip discs), floppy compatibility, and a real write protect thrown in for good measure. The only downside to the SuperDisk is that they didn't keep up with capacity. Iomega brought out a kick ass thin line Zip250 USB (which I also own) that has more than doubled capacity and is backward compatible with Zip100s. But Imation has kept the SD at 120MB. Of course, compared to the 2.2 Gig Orb drive, both Zip and SD are miniscule in terms of storage (2Gigs LESS). So it all depends on how much storage you need.

BTW, if you really want to see SLOW, try reading one of those pervasively available Zip100 discs in a new Zip250 drive. HINT - it makes the original "YUCK" SuperDisk look like a speed demon! I own both the Zip250 USB and 2x SuperDisk. Whatever advantages each has is balanced by the other IMHO.......joe

I don't think the Superdrive is expensive. I got mine with 5 disks at Sears for $120 after rebates. I works great, reads my old floppies, is fast enough to play a Quicktime movie from it without being jumpy. What's not to like about it.

How much do superdisks cost as opposed to 100MB zip disks?

Zip *and* SuperDisk are both slow and unreliable. As are all magnetic removable media. Even the big boys like Jaz and Orb. It is just not worth it.

Solution: Purchase an external USB (or FireWire) hard drive instead. It is completely sealed from dust, dirt, and moisture and will withstand moderate drop shock. All things that will detroy removable media and their drives. While the up front cost for an external hard drive is *slightly* more than a Zip drive and 1 disk, the per megabyte cost is much less. Less money, with more reliability. How can you argue with that.

With the growing pervasiveness of USB (everyone should have it at $20 for a 2 port PCI card) and the dropping cost of USB hard drives, removable media should be phased out of everyone's workflow. It is just too darn unreliable, and compared to an actual hard drive, it is a more expenisve investment.

I have a both a 100 zip USB and an Imation drive for use with my iBook (466 SE). Sometimes, randomly it appears, neither the Super Disk nor de Zip disk will mount (the Apple System Profiler shows that the drives are connected, but the disks do not show on the desktop). Does anyone have this same problem? I would really appreciate some help here.

Thanks!

Hi, I don't know what's going on with Imation but here in Japan Panasonic is introducing a new type Superdisk drive which will expand the capacity of 1.44MB floppy disk to 32MB, 120MB superdisk to 240MB and you can still use the 1.44MB disk as you did. I saw samples at World PC Expo which ended last week here and was told this new type drive will be shipping on January 2001. So don't warry about the future of SuperDisk.

Originally posted by tesseract:
Zip *and* SuperDisk are both slow and unreliable. As are all magnetic removable media. Even the big boys like Jaz and Orb. It is just not worth it.

Solution: Purchase an external USB (or FireWire) hard drive instead. It is completely sealed from dust, dirt, and moisture and will withstand moderate drop shock. All things that will detroy removable media and their drives. While the up front cost for an external hard drive is *slightly* more than a Zip drive and 1 disk, the per megabyte
cost is much less. Less money, with more reliability. How can you argue with that.

With the growing pervasiveness of USB (everyone should have it at $20 for a 2 port PCI card) and the dropping cost of USB hard drives, removable media should be phased out of everyone's workflow. It is just too darn unreliable, and compared to an actual hard drive, it is a more expenisve investment.

_______________________________
Hey, don't be so quick to dismiss all external drives. I use a Fujitsu MO drive; totally reliable, the disks are virtually indestructable, and I am thus able to make *multiple* back ups of my most important files, which I then store in different places (something you can't do with a HD).

[joe]

Originally posted by Grateful:
I don't think the Superdrive is expensive. I got mine with 5 disks at Sears for $120 after rebates. I works great, reads my old floppies, is fast enough to play a Quicktime movie from it without being jumpy. What's not to like about it.

My SuperDrive was $99 after rebate including a mail in offer for a free matching face plate (lime for my iMacDV). However, I saw the same drive in the local Circuit City for $79 on sale!!! It had the $20 rebate sticker on it too!!!!!!!!!!! This was before they started carrying iMacs though. Probably not much of a market for USB SuperDrives on PC at the time though (last Spring).

BTW, I also have great playback with the new full screen QT movies on Superdisks. Mine is the later 2x model SuperDrive.....joe

[This message has been edited by joe (edited 10-30-2000).]

[tombarta]

"I have a both a 100 zip USB and an Imation drive for use with my iBook (466 SE).
Sometimes, randomly it appears, neither the Super Disk nor de Zip disk will mount........"

Well, USB is a quirky technology (it is, after all, from Intel). My G4 desktop does not always recognize my Palm cradle. Sometimes physically unplugging and re-plugging the drive may do it. The other possibility is that something gets a little wacky when you use "sleep" on your powerbook (that is, Apple screwed something up)-- the plug/unplug would probably still do the trick.

[MacNN Staff]

From: "Enoch Kwok @ GUSD"
Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2001 10:09:29 -0800
To: <news@macnn.com>
Subject: Imation Superdisk Drives discontinued!

Hello, MacNN,

I have just called Imation and spoken to their customer tech support reps.
After trying to find an external Imation superdisk drive from all the usual
vendors and learning that nobody has any in stock, I decided to call Imation
for the details of this mystery. Unfortunately, I found out that Imation no
longer produces the drives because their supplier of parts has stopped
producing the components. This is very serious news for the Mac community
and I shudder to think what this is going to do for the future of Mac
removeable storage!

Does anyone have any comparable solutions (standard floppy and high density
removeable drive in one?)

By the way, the only serial printer on the market left for those legacy Macs
is the Epson 900G which is only available at a decent price from Apple
($165) in the Education store. Once these are gone, there will be no
printer solution for the legacy Macs that use a Din-8 serial connection.
(The venerable Epson 740 was discontinued several months ago!)

Long live the Mac.....

[This message has been edited by MacNN Staff (edited 01-06-2001).]

[G4Man]

I have both the usb zip drive, and usb superdisk drive. Both are awesome in storing files, etc. I got them both for free, yippy me
I use the zip for my graphic files, and the superdisk for programs. Great all around. I would recommend both.