abc wrote on 2021-11-13, 22:44:

I'm just trying to use 100MB floppy media in Iomega ZIP250ATAPI drive. Under WIndows XP it shows drive in my computer but when I try to open it asks to insert floppy to drive. It doesn't read but floppy is in working condition as I tested it on ZIP100 LPT/USB drives. Question is 100MB should work in that drive ?

Yes, Zip 250 drives are backward compatible with zip 100 discs

Thank you. So I have to check how clean is head in drive.

250 MB ZIP drive are not fully compatible with 100 MB cartridge. You cannot do a full format. If the cartridge is protected, you need IomegaWare software to access it. Without it Windows XP may not recognize the cartridge.
If one works in a ZIP 100 drive and it is not protected, it can be a drive head problem. I would recommend to test the drive with a 250 MB cartridge, formatting, writing and reading file on it to see if the drive is working. The internal is very fragile, especially the heads so I do not recommended to clean them.

Datadrainer wrote on 2021-11-14, 20:00:

250 MB ZIP drive are not fully compatible with 100 MB cartridge. You cannot do a full format. If the disk is protected, you need the Iomega Tools software to access it. Without it Windows XP may not recognize it.
If the cartridge works in a ZIP 100 drive and it is not protected, it can be a drive head problem. I would recommend to test the drive with a 250 MB cartridge, formatting, writing and reading file on it to see if the drive is working. The internal is very fragile, especially the heads so I do not recommended to clean them.

Are you sure? I used zip drives loads back in the early 2000s and I used to use 100mb zip discs in my 250mb drive with no issues -- could format, read, write etc with no issues.
Used to use them in a 250 drive on my laptop and the 100mb drives that the university computers had to shuttle data around.
Never had to specially format the 100mb discs - they just worked fine in the 250mb drive.
The zip drive was an internal one on a dell inspiron 8100 so pretty sure it was ATAPI and the drives on the uni computers were ATAPI with a few USB ones too.

squelch41 wrote on 2021-11-14, 21:52:

Are you sure? I used zip drives loads back in the early 2000s and I used to use 100mb zip discs in my 250mb drive with no issues […]
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Datadrainer wrote on 2021-11-14, 20:00:

250 MB ZIP drive are not fully compatible with 100 MB cartridge. You cannot do a full format. If the disk is protected, you need the Iomega Tools software to access it. Without it Windows XP may not recognize it.
If the cartridge works in a ZIP 100 drive and it is not protected, it can be a drive head problem. I would recommend to test the drive with a 250 MB cartridge, formatting, writing and reading file on it to see if the drive is working. The internal is very fragile, especially the heads so I do not recommended to clean them.

Are you sure? I used zip drives loads back in the early 2000s and I used to use 100mb zip discs in my 250mb drive with no issues -- could format, read, write etc with no issues.
Used to use them in a 250 drive on my laptop and the 100mb drives that the university computers had to shuttle data around.
Never had to specially format the 100mb discs - they just worked fine in the 250mb drive.
The zip drive was an internal one on a dell inspiron 8100 so pretty sure it was ATAPI and the drives on the uni computers were ATAPI with a few USB ones too.

Sure and certain. You can do fast format, but not long format. And writing to a 100 MB cartridge in a 250 MB drive is slower than with a 100 MB drive, especially with small files. I have a collection of ZIP and JAZ drives. My ZIP drives are external parallel, SCSI, USB (USB powered and with external PSU) port and internal ATAPI.

I never said you have to specially format a 100 MB disc in a 250 MB for it to work. Long format is useful if you have a protected disc and you forgot the password. The only way to use it again is to do a long format. And for a 100 MB cartridge, this can only be done in a 100 MB drive.

With IomegaWare software you can test a cartridge to see if the drive and the cartridge is working .

Datadrainer wrote on 2021-11-15, 14:01:

Sure and certain. You can do fast format, but not long format...
Long format is useful if you have a protected disc and you forgot the password...

With IomegaWare software you can test a cartridge to see if the drive and the cartridge is working .

That's because IomegaWare "long format" would be the equivalent of "low level format" on Harddrives with special manufacturing or PC3000-like tools.
This writes data to the SA cylinder in the ZIP disk and manipulates the GS lists.

For that you need issue special ATAPI/SCSI vendor commands using an specific crafted SCSI/ATAPI CBDs. Thus you need IomegaWare for that... In other words, that's what makes it special.

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-11-16, 19:25:

That's because IomegaWare "long format" would be the equivalent of "low level format" on Harddrives with special manufacturing o […]
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Datadrainer wrote on 2021-11-15, 14:01:

Sure and certain. You can do fast format, but not long format...
Long format is useful if you have a protected disc and you forgot the password...

With IomegaWare software you can test a cartridge to see if the drive and the cartridge is working .

That's because IomegaWare "long format" would be the equivalent of "low level format" on Harddrives with special manufacturing or PC3000-like tools.
This writes data to the SA cylinder in the ZIP disk and manipulates the GS lists.

For that you need issue special ATAPI/SCSI vendor commands using an specific crafted SCSI/ATAPI CBDs. Thus you need IomegaWare for that... In other words, that's what makes it special.

Thanks for the information, that's interesting. I didn't know that. I always though a long format would just test sectors and fill them with 0 and then create the disk structure. Compared to a fast format that would just rewrite the disc structure. For what I remember of the 80's, low level format was used for MFM media (HDD, floppies). Used at the time to restore bad sectors or to allow a disk to work with a new controller. If a long format in IomegaWare is a LLF it means a bad ZIP cartridge, like a bad floppy disk, can potentially be recovered that way. Unfortunately, I never was able to recover one. Maybe just bad luck 🙁

Datadrainer wrote on 2021-11-16, 21:00:

For what I remember of the 80's, low level format was used for MFM media (HDD, floppies). Used at the time to restore bad sectors or to allow a disk to work with a new controller. If a long format in IomegaWare is a LLF it means a bad ZIP cartridge, like a bad floppy disk, can potentially be recovered that way.

Yes and no. You can't do the same as with MFM LLF on Floppy and old stepper motor head driven HDDs, as ZIP heads are Voice Coil driven, thus the disk media is hard servo-tracked on factory time (you can't alter it with your home ZIP device). But certainly it does more than the OS formatting built in procedures... As I said, in the same level you can accomplish with manufacturer supplied tools and stuff like the AceLabs PC3000 on modern HDDs.

I imagine it invokes a firmware factory test routine stored in the ZIP device firmware, or uploads one stored in the Iomegaware executable to the ZIP reader via manufacturer specific ATAPI CBDs, and executes it there. That procedure does test to the surface sectors, updates the GS tables stored in the ZIPs SA cylinder with any new bad sector found, and while modifying the SA, it also resets the security data stored there. You know, the same stuff you can do with the easy mode of PC3000 software, or things like SeaTools/MaxBlast/MHDD/HDAT2/etc.

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-11-16, 22:05:

Datadrainer wrote on 2021-11-16, 21:00:

For what I remember of the 80's, low level format was used for MFM media (HDD, floppies). Used at the time to restore bad sectors or to allow a disk to work with a new controller. If a long format in IomegaWare is a LLF it means a bad ZIP cartridge, like a bad floppy disk, can potentially be recovered that way.

Yes and no. You can't do the same as with MFM LLF on Floppy and old stepper motor head driven HDDs, as ZIP heads are Voice Coil driven, thus the disk media is hard servo-tracked on factory time (you can't alter it with your home ZIP device). But certainly it does more than the OS formatting built in procedures... As I said, in the same level you can accomplish with manufacturer supplied tools and stuff like the AceLabs PC3000 on modern HDDs.

I imagine it invokes a firmware factory test routine stored in the ZIP device firmware, or uploads one stored in the Iomegaware executable to the ZIP reader via manufacturer specific ATAPI CBDs, and executes it there. That procedure does test to the surface sectors, updates the GS tables stored in the ZIPs SA cylinder with any new bad sector found, and while modifying the SA, it also resets the security data stored there. You know, the same stuff you can do with the easy mode of PC3000 software, or things like SeaTools/MaxBlast/MHDD/HDAT2/etc.

I didn't know ACE Laboratory products, but I just read about them, especially the PC-3000 UDMA get my attention 😀. But I'm used to HDD manufacturers tools and SMART datas. So, I see what you mean. When you speak of GS table, I suppose that's for "garbage sectors" or something similar. Please, correct me if I'm wrong. So what you say, if I understand correctly is that a ZIP disc contains a table of its bad sectors.
It seems to be an hybrid solution between:
* A floppy disk where bad sectors are managed by the OS and marked in the FAT
* And a HDD where the bad sectors are first managed by the OS, then disabled by the HDD controller, then registered in a NAND and finally reallocated into a reserved space.
So as everything is managed transparently by the hardware. That is quite smart as the OS will only see what is presented to it and can format a drive without knowing there is bad sectors. The only thing changing being the available space on the disk. The only problem I see is if this table gets corrupted.

@abc, did you get your drive to work?

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-11-16, 22:05:

That procedure does test to the surface sectors, updates the GS tables stored in the ZIPs SA cylinder with any new bad sector found, and while modifying the SA, it also resets the security data stored there. You know, the same stuff you can do with the easy mode of PC3000 software, or things like SeaTools/MaxBlast/MHDD/HDAT2/etc.

Know any good guides for using MHDD in the system area? I have a drive that took a power spike while POSTing and forgot what it was.

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-11-16, 19:25:

That's because IomegaWare "long format" would be the equivalent of "low level format" on Harddrives with special manufacturing o […]
Show full quote

Datadrainer wrote on 2021-11-15, 14:01:

Sure and certain. You can do fast format, but not long format...
Long format is useful if you have a protected disc and you forgot the password...

With IomegaWare software you can test a cartridge to see if the drive and the cartridge is working .

That's because IomegaWare "long format" would be the equivalent of "low level format" on Harddrives with special manufacturing or PC3000-like tools.
This writes data to the SA cylinder in the ZIP disk and manipulates the GS lists.

For that you need issue special ATAPI/SCSI vendor commands using an specific crafted SCSI/ATAPI CBDs. Thus you need IomegaWare for that... In other words, that's what makes it special.

Ah, interesting!
I'd have only ever just formatted within windows 2000 format tool

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-11-17, 18:57:

Know any good guides for using MHDD in the system area? I have a drive that took a power spike while POSTing and forgot what it was.

Unfortunately no. That's knowledge which doesn't get frequently out from private threads at HDDguru. And asides, SA hdd area manipulation is pretty limited without a proper hardware IDE/SATA/SCSI controller which allow you to unrestrictly peek and poke specially crafted commands and CBDs to the HDD. On last models, you also need combine that with drive's diagnostic console port access, sending commands to the console port while peeking n' poking data on the main drive interface.

Maybe someday someone would implement at least part of this as opensource hardware and software bundle. Unfortunately that day still isn't today 😒.

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-11-18, 03:12:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-11-17, 18:57:

Know any good guides for using MHDD in the system area? I have a drive that took a power spike while POSTing and forgot what it was.

Unfortunately no. That's knowledge which doesn't get frequently out from private threads at HDDguru. And asides, SA hdd area manipulation is pretty limited without a proper hardware IDE/SATA/SCSI controller which allow you to unrestrictly peek and poke specially crafted commands and CBDs to the HDD. On last models, you also need combine that with drive's diagnostic console port access, sending commands to the console port while peeking n' poking data on the main drive interface.

Maybe someday someone would implement at least part of this as opensource hardware and software bundle. Unfortunately that day still isn't today 😒.

is this why data recovery houses are so expensive? forbidden knowledge on private fora?

Well yeah and the high cost proprietary tools. Tools for mechanicking on the drives can be specific to drive model, so probably need to do a half dozen repairs just to one model of HDD before you break even. A lot of it is jigs you could maybe 3D print though. Russian hobbyists seem to know a lot, but you're stuck with their varying commands of English or the hilarity of Google Translate. (Which might be decent on "proper" written stuff, but on slangy forum posts also full of jargon, ain't so hot.)

Edit: Also some repairs come at high cost of consumables, which include parts from identical drives, heads get literally burned up or scrubbed to death doing multiple reads over damaged areas. So in some instances, you'd need to source 3 or 4 identical working drives to get the data off one. Large scale it evens out more since the boards off those might be useful in some repairs while the heads were useful in another etc.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-11-18, 13:38:

is this why data recovery houses are so expensive? forbidden knowledge on private fora?

In part... Yes. Russians from AceLabs profit big time by keeping private blueprints, docs and other internal stuff acquired under special deals or "hacked" from SSD and HDD manufacturers under vault. In fact, if you go to HDDguru, is clearly warned in their forum rules than people with PC3000 kits can't post outside private subforums and/or threads, or they will get banned and reported to AceLabs to get their PC3000 certificate keys revoked.

The alternative? Getting a FULL open-source implementation of an ATA/SATA controller on FPGA would be a good start. DDrescue and similar opensource DR tools would get modeled around it to gain access to some advanced features first, and later HDD/SDD SA manipulation, the holy grail of advanced DR.