[DNA man]

I have been looking around for a FW adaptor for my USB powered 250mb Zip drive for a while on eBay but haven't sourced one. I know that the FW adaptor is going to speed things up but how much faster will it be?
The adaptor new is $80 and I don't want to splash out unless it's really worth it.

Can anyone who has the the FW Zip tell me is it is as fast as the old SCSI Zip drive or if it's 2x, 3x etc faster that USB?

Thanks,
DNA man

[DNA man]

C'mon guys, no one has a FW bus driven 250Mb Zip out there to give me fed back on?

[sMACk]

I have one but I don't really notice a radical difference. I would have to do a side by side to tell the difference but that in itself tells you the difference may not be worth $80.

[PeteWK]

Hi DNAman. I went the same route you're suggesting. I bought the USB Zip drive when it came out and bought the FW adapter on eBay some time later. Iomega claimed the difference was 1.1 mbps for the USB and 2.0 mbps for the FireWire Zip 250. I also have a Zip 250 internal for my Pismo Powerbook and I would say the external is just a little bit faster.

The big draws for me are twofold. First, the drive becomes bus powered. I really LOVE that about it. Second is that I can copy files or programs and carry the drive over to my wife's Indigo iBook. I have superdrives (two of them) and a Yamaha CD-RW and nothing else takes the place of my FW Zip drive. To be honest, I don't even know where the power supply for the Zip drive is. I just haven't used it in almost a year.

PeteWK

btw, I paid about 65 dollars including shipping for it on ebay

[Eug]

Originally posted by PeteWK:
<STRONG>Hi DNAman. I went the same route you're suggesting. I bought the USB Zip drive when it came out and bought the FW adapter on eBay some time later. Iomega claimed the difference was 1.1 mbps for the USB and 2.0 mbps for the FireWire Zip 250. I also have a Zip 250 internal for my Pismo Powerbook and I would say the external is just a little bit faster.

The big draws for me are twofold. First, the drive becomes bus powered. I really LOVE that about it. Second is that I can copy files or programs and carry the drive over to my wife's Indigo iBook. I have superdrives (two of them) and a Yamaha CD-RW and nothing else takes the place of my FW Zip drive. To be honest, I don't even know where the power supply for the Zip drive is. I just haven't used it in almost a year.

PeteWK

btw, I paid about 65 dollars including shipping for it on ebay</STRONG>

The current USB 250 drives are bus powered. No AC adapter to plug in.

[PeteWK]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>

The current USB 250 drives are bus powered. No AC adapter to plug in.</STRONG>

Those came out after I got my USB adapter. I just can't help but wonder what you'd be giving up given that the FireWire drive draws 5 volts and the USB one maxes out at 2 volts. I'll have to check iomega's website to see if there's a loss of data transfer speed.

PeteWK

[PeteWK]

Just checked out Iomega's website and found the following. USB delivers up to 1.4 mbps and FireWire delivers up to 2.3 mbps. If you have the PCMIA adapter, you get up to .9 mbps. That would make the FireWire roughly 65% faster than the USB of any type, powered or not. And my assumption would be that a bus powered model would actually be slower than an AC powered model for obvious reasons.

So, DNAman, the deal is that a FireWire Zip 250 wipes the USB model clean in terms of speed and is just as convenient.

PeteWK

[Eug]

Originally posted by PeteWK:
<STRONG>Just checked out Iomega's website and found the following. USB delivers up to 1.4 mbps and FireWire delivers up to 2.3 mbps. If you have the PCMIA adapter, you get up to .9 mbps. That would make the FireWire roughly 65% faster than the USB of any type, powered or not. And my assumption would be that a bus powered model would actually be slower than an AC powered model for obvious reasons.

So, DNAman, the deal is that a FireWire Zip 250 wipes the USB model clean in terms of speed and is just as convenient.</STRONG>

Well, a friend has the Firewire one, and I have both the USB-powered one and the USB AC adapter-powered one. In real life usage they're all pretty damn slow, and usually nowhere near the spec'd speeds. The bus-powered and adapter-powered ones are in the same range in terms of speed. The Firewire one is a bit faster. However, it's also a heluvalot more expensive, and it's bigger too. The other issue is when I want to transfer files to my PC laptop-owning friends. USB is all their laptops support anyway, so having the Firewire capability for this purpose is useless. However, this may be irrelevant to exclusive Mac'ers.

Out of all of them, if you don't already have drive that can be updated to Firewire, I think the best bang for the buck is still the USB-powered one, especially if you want to carry it around because it's lighter and smaller.

BTW, these comments are all moot for the original poster. The USB bus-powered one doesn't support Firewire anyway.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>
Well, a friend has the Firewire one, and I have both the USB-powered one and the USB AC adapter-powered one. In real life usage they're all pretty damn slow, and usually nowhere near the spec'd speeds. The bus-powered and adapter-powered ones are in the same range in terms of speed. The Firewire one is a bit faster. However, it's also a heluvalot more expensive, and it's bigger too. The other issue is when I want to transfer files to my PC laptop-owning friends. USB is all their laptops support anyway, so having the Firewire capability for this purpose is useless. However, this may be irrelevant to exclusive Mac'ers. </STRONG>

Oh Eug. You need to USE these things before you make opinions of them. The firewire Zip is not a "bit faster" it is TWICE as fast. I tested copying files to it a million times about 100 megs took 2 minutes on USB and 1:03 on Firewire. That is quite more then a "bit". Yes Zips are still slow, nothing we can do about that.

Second the firewire drives are not THAT much bigger, it is the same size as the USB one with a 1 inch backpack on the back (that comes off and you can snap on PCIMCIA adapters).

Since the firewire model also has USB you can transfer to your PC buddies and Mac users with Firewire. It is not our fault that PC's are so slow to adapt Firewire and they think that USB is a speed demon compared to serial.

You are right about it being expensive though, but it has a cool flashing blue light and came out over a YEAR before the USB powered one did. For people who don't want a AC adapter this was a good choice.

You also need to remember that using USB to copy anything will not only tie up the USB bus to almost full, but USB requires the use of your computer CPU slowing things down. Firewire needs no computer to handle all the transfer.

So if I can copy a 250 zip in 2.5 minutes instead of 5 minutes and not hog my CPU and USB bus I think for many that is worth it.

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
<STRONG>

Oh Eug. You need to USE these things before you make opinions of them. The firewire Zip is not a "bit faster" it is TWICE as fast. I tested copying files to it a million times about 100 megs took 2 minutes on USB and 1:03 on Firewire. That is quite more then a "bit". Yes Zips are still slow, nothing we can do about that.

Second the firewire drives are not THAT much bigger, it is the same size as the USB one with a 1 inch backpack on the back (that comes off and you can snap on PCIMCIA adapters).

Since the firewire model also has USB you can transfer to your PC buddies and Mac users with Firewire. It is not our fault that PC's are so slow to adapt Firewire and they think that USB is a speed demon compared to serial.

You are right about it being expensive though, but it has a cool flashing blue light and came out over a YEAR before the USB powered one did. For people who don't want a AC adapter this was a good choice.

You also need to remember that using USB to copy anything will not only tie up the USB bus to almost full, but USB requires the use of your computer CPU slowing things down. Firewire needs no computer to handle all the transfer.

So if I can copy a 250 zip in 2.5 minutes instead of 5 minutes and not hog my CPU and USB bus I think for many that is worth it.</STRONG>

The transfer speed depends on the state of the disc too. Were your tests done on freshly formatted or heavily used discs? Probably for heavily used discs the seek times are what are important and it eats up a lot of time. So for say 20 MB transfers the difference is not as proportionally huge as if you did a direct sequential 250 MB copy (where the Firewire would likely be MUCH faster), since on both drives the seek times would likely be similar. Most people don't use zip drives to transfer 250 MBs of files. That's where CDRW comes in. YMMV.

Also, you can use USB with the Firewire one only if decide to carry the adapter around since it's not USB-powered. So it's not just the Firewire adapter, it's also the adapter.

I do like the cool flashing blue light though. My Firewire hard drive has one too.

But anyways, like I said earlier, it's irrelevant to the original poster, since to use Firewire he'd have to buy a whole new drive.

P.S. I have an IDE one too. Despite the similar specs to the Firewire one, it seems significantly faster but I haven't done a direct comparison. It would a useless comparison anyway since it's an internal piece.

Originally posted by &lt;Eug&gt;:
<STRONG>P.S. I have an IDE one too. Despite the similar specs to the Firewire one, it seems significantly faster but I haven't done a direct comparison. It would a useless comparison anyway since it's an internal piece.</STRONG>

OK sorry for the multiple messages but I can't edit since I hadn't bothered to log in.

Anyways, the seek times may explain why the IDE drive seems much faster:

USB/PCMCIA/Firewire 250 MB zip seek times: &lt;40 ms avg.

IDE 250 MB zip seek time: 29 ms avg.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by &lt;Eug&gt;:
<STRONG>

The transfer speed depends on the state of the disc too. Were your tests done on freshly formatted or heavily used discs? </STRONG>

I formated the disk, copied the files. Then I formated the disk and tried it again. It is twice as fast each time.

Either way the bandwidth specs are twice as high as the USB one so it is MUCH faster then USB.

I ain't complaining about copying things twice as fast (PC users with USB and no AC adapter be damned).

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
<STRONG>

I formated the disk, copied the files. Then I formated the disk and tried it again. It is twice as fast each time.

Either way the bandwidth specs are twice as high as the USB one so it is MUCH faster then USB.

I ain't complaining about copying things twice as fast (PC users with USB and no AC adapter be damned).</STRONG>

Like I said, with real world use you won't get the same speeds, since most people don't use freshly formatted disks each time. What slows everything down is having to seek all over the drive because of disk fragmentation. Seek times with the firewire and USB drives is the same which means that while Firewire overall will be faster, overall it might not be as much as somebody might hope, after spending US$80.

That said, if somebody gave me a Firewire adapter, I'd gladly take it. Every little speed boost helps.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by &lt;Eug&gt;:
<STRONG>That said, if somebody gave me a Firewire adapter, I'd gladly take it. Every little speed boost helps. </STRONG>

Sad thing is you can't even put a Firewire adapter on your famed USB bus powered model. It only works on the older models.

I would also love to see how much of a possible slowdown a fragmented disk would cause, what 10-20% on a 250 Zip? That would still make the firewire model 80% faster.

[DNA man]

Damn, when I bought the USB powered Zip250 I was told by Microcenter that I could upgrade to the FW adaptor later. Now I can't.

You know what I even rang up Iomega, they told me that it would work but when I checked their website it says that it doesn't! You'd think that Iomega would know their own stuff.

Oh, well, slow USB for me.

DNA man

[ 02-07-2002: Message edited by: DNA man ]

[DNA man]

I suppose on the bright side I save $80. And that's $80 towards a new 1Ghz dually in the future.

[Eug]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
<STRONG>Sad thing is you can't even put a Firewire adapter on your famed USB bus powered model. It only works on the older models.</STRONG>

Actually I own both the USB-powered one and the other at the moment. It seems nobody wants to buy my non-USB-powered one.

<STRONG>I would also love to see how much of a possible slowdown a fragmented disk would cause, what 10-20% on a 250 Zip? That would still make the firewire model 80% faster.</STRONG>

Well, I dunno for sure, but even my IDE one with the much faster seek times runs like molasses on a fragmented disk.

However, I may use my disks differently than you do. If you transfer great big files only yours should remain pretty fast. However, if you have a lot of tiny files thrown in then you may have big slowdowns after some usage.

[ 02-07-2002: Message edited by: Eug ]

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>However, I may use my disks differently than you do. If you transfer great big files only yours should remain pretty fast. However, if you have a lot of tiny files thrown in then you may have big slowdowns.</STRONG>

Copying lots of little smaller files is always faster as the disk doesn't go back and forth as much.

But saying getting the Firewire drive has no real advantage as fragmented disks make it slower, is like saying one shouldn't get a 7200 RPM hard drive over a 5400 as after fragmentation it will be slower.

Remember these disks are only 250 megs fast, so they can't become that fragmented.

[PeteWK]

Originally posted by DNA man:
<STRONG> Damn, when I bought the USB powered Zip250 I was told by Microcenter that I could upgrade to the FW adaptor later. Now I can't.

You know what I even rang up Iomega, they told me that it would work but when I checked their website it says that it doesn't! You'd think that Iomega would know their own stuff.

Oh, well, slow USB for me.

DNA man

[ 02-07-2002: Message edited by: DNA man ]</STRONG>

The obvious solution here is for you to sell your USB powered Zip 250 on eBay and buy one of the older, non-powered ones. Your drive is worth considerably more. And with the difference you can buy the FireWire adapter.

Problem solved,

PeteWK

[DNA man]

Thanks. Good suggestion. I'd prefer to make the switch to FW Zip a bit more simple but eBay is the best way.

Cheers,
DNA man

[ 02-10-2002: Message edited by: DNA man ]

[Eug]

Originally posted by DNA man:
[qb]Thanks. Good suggestion. I'd prefer to make the switch to FW Zip a bit more simple but eBay is the best way.

If I were in your shoes I'd probably just keep the USB-powered one, but if you really want one I'm selling my non-bus-powered one.

My email is active.

[ 02-11-2002: Message edited by: Eug ]

[DNA man]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>

If I were in your shoes I'd probably just keep the USB-powered one, but if you really want one I'm selling my non-bus-powered one.

My email is active.

[ 02-11-2002: Message edited by: Eug ]</STRONG>

Thanks, I think I will stick with the USB powered one for the time being. Thanks for the offer though.