Just so you know, these things are ticking time bombs. My dad asked me to pull some data off of his old Jaz disks and when I put them into the dive, the part of the disk where the platters are connected to the plastic frame broke apart while they spun up. Out of something like 10 or 12 disks I think only two didn't fly apart in the drive.

To clarify, the disks were shipped around multiple times between moves and placement in storage lockers. They experienced both very high and very low temperatures during this time. When the drive spun up the plastic actually broke apart between the connection of the disk housing. This resulted in the platter stack "floating" around inside the disk after removal from the drive.

I would not recommend these disks for anything other than a novelty.

Thanks for the heads up. I don't trust ZIP or Jaz, but transferring a few things between systems makes it a bit easier.

I'm creating an all-in-one media station that can read any media. I doubt I'll use the Jaz drive much, but I have had it requested a few times in the past. I'll just use the external Jaz for now.

Kahenraz wrote:

I would not recommend these disks for anything other than a novelty.

Your Jaz experience sounds more like an exception than a norm. Iomega did issue a recall for faulty cartridges at one point though, which is something that anyone using Jaz media should probably watch out for:

https://web.archive.org/web/19980118002914/ht … az/jazdisk.html

Regarding the original issue, can you describe how your internal SCSI chain is terminated, dogchainx?

Its terminated by the last SCSI drive (and only) which is the Iomega Jaz. I even tried a few different cables, both with the Jaz drive in the middle of the cable with a SCSI terminator at the end. The working drive I tested is configured with jumpers exactly the same (SCSI ID 0, sometimes 1 or 2) and the SCSI ID of the controller is 7. The working one has no issues whatsoever no matter the cable or where its place in the drive train.

With the "problematic ones" I tried to flip around the ID's to see if that made any difference, with the controller at 0 and Jaz at 2, 4 and 6 but no difference. The disk spins up, then no activity after that and the drive times out in SCSISelect bios and in Windows98SE when i try TIP or access the drive in explorer.

Bah, sorry, I'd missed the edit where you mentioned that a third internal Jaz drive worked fine.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Bah, sorry, I'd missed the edit where you mentioned that a third internal Jaz drive worked fine.

Thanks for the help though! 😎