Zip and Jaz drives may accumulate contamination on the head sliders over time. They are in direct contact with the data carrier during operation. Bernoulli should be more durable since it doesn't come in contact with the media during operation (There are some exceptions due to the loading mechanism).
The controller electronics might rarely suffer from leaky electrolytic, rotting capacitors.
In my experience, mostly Syquest drives, 44MB, 88MB units were dying on us all the time. Head crashes, faulty electronics. Zip and Jazz maybe 1 out of 50. Even the "cheap" usb ones work to this day.

DAVE86 wrote on 2022-09-10, 08:38:

Zip and Jaz drives may accumulate contamination on the head sliders over time. They are in direct contact with the data carrier during operation. Bernoulli should be more durable since it doesn't come in contact with the media during operation (There are some exceptions due to the loading mechanism).
The controller electronics might rarely suffer from leaky electrolytic, rotting capacitors.
In my experience, mostly Syquest drives, 44MB, 88MB units were dying on us all the time. Head crashes, faulty electronics. Zip and Jazz maybe 1 out of 50. Even the "cheap" usb ones work to this day.

Do you know if they have an uptime counter?

All those old systems are interesting. Also LS-120, Orb... non standard that didn't make past CDs.
Thankfully there are many interesting videos on YT.

Signs of malfunction of the drive that you can see on the medium? Like scratches?

That remind something
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00E1IMq5UMA

- "How long does copying take ?"
- "It takes a few hours"

😀

If you can buy a bunch of these kinds of drives and disks for pennies from some old stock, then they could be "quick" use media for moving things around. I have used Zip and Jaz back and the day, and they had their issues. And if any have survived to today, I wouldn't trust it with important stuff. I'm sure they've had some use by this point, so I'd assume kind of on their last legs on working. I've looked to see what they cost on the net, and I just couldn't bring myself to buy any for what people price things for.

They have zero hours of duty. Those are vintage storage systems which may fail any given moment and as such have to be treated as museum exhibits.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not looking to find a way to predict the remaining life of those systems.
Just to know if there is a built-in time counter.

I'm never going to put critical data on such mediums. We have encrypted servers and data encryption at its finest, not mentioning the ridiculous low cost of SD cards (just to mention the most used).

As far as I know Zip and Jaz don't have such counters, at least not that the software suite allows to check.
Zip has a relocation area for bad tracks, that made me think that maybe there is data stored that wasn't available with stock software.
If this, why not other and older systems?

ThinkpadIL wrote on 2022-09-10, 21:47:

They have zero hours of duty. Those are vintage storage systems which may fail any given moment and as such have to be treated as museum exhibits.

Many disks I checked had bad tracks or were in bad shape.
A new, still wrapped, disk had a few bad tracks 😀

Not really a super fan with all the alternatives we now have.

Nexxen wrote on 2022-09-11, 08:25:

Many disks I checked had bad tracks or were in bad shape.
A new, still wrapped, disk had a few bad tracks 😀

Not really a super fan with all the alternatives we now have.

Look for storage solutions of better quality. There is no sense in using obsolete from all points of view hardware for serious purposes.

ThinkpadIL wrote on 2022-09-11, 08:54:

Nexxen wrote on 2022-09-11, 08:25:

Many disks I checked had bad tracks or were in bad shape.
A new, still wrapped, disk had a few bad tracks 😀

Not really a super fan with all the alternatives we now have.

Look for storage solutions of better quality. There is no sense in using obsolete from all points of view hardware for serious purposes.

That is not the point.

My question is if there is a way to know if there is stored data on some ROM on the drive to tell how much time it has been powered on.
If any of those many drives had one, like a SMART for IDE drives.

My answer was that I, in fact, don't trust such storage systems for critical data storage, as we have better alternatives.
Come on, I'm not that crazy! 😀

Nexxen wrote on 2022-09-11, 09:34:

That is not the point. […]
Show full quote

ThinkpadIL wrote on 2022-09-11, 08:54:

Nexxen wrote on 2022-09-11, 08:25:

Many disks I checked had bad tracks or were in bad shape.
A new, still wrapped, disk had a few bad tracks 😀

Not really a super fan with all the alternatives we now have.

Look for storage solutions of better quality. There is no sense in using obsolete from all points of view hardware for serious purposes.

That is not the point.

My question is if there is a way to know if there is stored data on some ROM on the drive to tell how much time it has been powered on.
If any of those many drives had one, like a SMART for IDE drives.

My answer was that I, in fact, don't trust such storage systems for critical data storage, as we have better alternatives.
Come on, I'm not that crazy! 😀

Well, it's hard to answer your question correctly since you change it after the answer was already given. 🙂

ThinkpadIL wrote on 2022-09-11, 13:08:

Nexxen wrote on 2022-09-11, 09:34:

That is not the point. […]
Show full quote

ThinkpadIL wrote on 2022-09-11, 08:54:

Look for storage solutions of better quality. There is no sense in using obsolete from all points of view hardware for serious purposes.

That is not the point.

My question is if there is a way to know if there is stored data on some ROM on the drive to tell how much time it has been powered on.
If any of those many drives had one, like a SMART for IDE drives.

My answer was that I, in fact, don't trust such storage systems for critical data storage, as we have better alternatives.
Come on, I'm not that crazy! 😀

Well, it's hard to answer your question correctly since you change it after the answer was already given. 🙂

I'm not talking about the supports, but the drive itself. I wrote at the beginning of then post 1.
I'm not changing anything, it's the same question all along.

You have IDE drives with SMART? You check uptime.

Is there any way to check this on the many I added in post 1? Through a tool? Eye?
I am curious to know.

There may be code in the drivers that work with SMART, but I honestly don't know. Perhaps there's something on the Linux side that would shed some light on whether that function was put into the drivers.

I use this to test zip disks, but doesn't say uptime, just actual condition of drive and disk.
https://www.grc.com/tip/clickdeath.htm

To answer the question
" Zip, Jaz, Bernouilli and other similar storage systems - can you determine how many hours of duty do they have already? "
to the best of my knowledge.

No.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-09-11, 14:31:

To answer the question " Zip, Jaz, Bernouilli and other similar storage systems - can you determine how many hours of duty do t […]
Show full quote

To answer the question
" Zip, Jaz, Bernouilli and other similar storage systems - can you determine how many hours of duty do they have already? "
to the best of my knowledge.

No.

It's starting to be my answer too. In order to have that data you must put diagnostic code, a place to store it and software to access it. Too much trouble.

Writing some software to perform an integrity check of the inserted support has been done, but apart from the state the support or the drive are at that precise moment,
probably nothing was implemented.

At least I went through an interesting journey in retro storage 😀