By Earl Dallas - : Earl@Dallas.freeserve.co.uk

Currently there are several high capacity floppy disk systems on the market; unfortunately each manufacturer or group of manufacturers are producing different standards and are competing with each other. This is great for competition forcing down prices and improving specifications but makes making a choice difficult.

The major choices for floppy drives are, listed in the following table. I am not sure that the ZIP drive is a floppy drive but it is included as its capacity and performance are similar to the other floppy drives listed:

Several months ago I purchased a Panasonic internal LS-120 floppy disk drive, whose initial function was to be as a backup device although the ability to use the drive for general data storage was also attractive.

For my £57 I got a LS-120 drive a 12 page manual and a set on drivers on a 1.44MB floppy disk (DOS, Windows 3.1 and windows 95). The LS-120 disk drive looks very similar to a standard floppy disk drive only the laser warning label suggests that this is not a normal floppy disk drive. The access light and eject button locations are identical to a standard floppy drive. At the rear of the unit the drive accepts the same power connection as a standard floppy drive. Unlike a 1.44MB floppy drive the drive connects to the IDE interface just like hard disks and CD-ROM's. Like any other IDE device the drive has movable links to select (master, slave and cable select) modes of operation. Installation is as simple as connecting power, IDE cables and screwing the drive into a spare 3½ inch drive bay. Unlike a standard floppy drive the LS-120 disk eject system is not mechanical, the eject button on the LS120 is simply a switch that activates a servo that ejects the disk. So disks can not be ejected from an LS-120 drive when the computer is switched off. Although an emergency eject system is provided similar to that on CD-ROM's, involving inserting a paper clip into a small hole in the middle of the eject button. Since the eject system is electrical it is possible to eject a disk from within windows, just like your CD-ROM drive.

The LS-120 drive supports 720KB, 1.44MB and 120MB super disks, and has a transfer rate of 484KB/sec for the IDE drive and 290KB/sec for the parallel port drive. Although the LS-120 can read write and format 720KB, 1.44MB disks to store 120Mb you must use a LS-120 disk. The LS-120 disks appearance is very similar to standard floppy disks except the metal shutter that protects the disk surface is not rectangular but triangular shaped. Each LS-120 disk is supplied in its own jewel case for extra protection. The disks appear to be no more fragile than standard floppy disks.

LS-120 disks and drives are also marketed under the name "Superdisk", as far as the user is concerned there is no difference between products using either trade mark. The "Superdisk" trademark is owned by Imation Corporation for use on its own LS-120 disks and drives. LS-120 disk standard supports DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and NT 4.0. Drivers are provided for these operating systems although Windows 95B, C, 98 and NT 4.0 support internal LS-120 IDE drives so no additional drivers are required for this operating system. On start-up windows will recognise the new drive and automatically start the driver installation process.

Within windows the option to copy a disk is available but Windows fails to copy because the disk is larger than 32Mb. Microsoft backup works with LS-120 disks but the Imation web site (www.superdisk.com) suggests that MS backup does not support spanning of disks. I have tried this and got MS backup to save a backup across disks using Windows 95B, although there may be certain situations or operating systems when this will not work. Some motherboards will allow you to boot from an LS-120 disk by selecting the LS-120 disk as the primary boot drive. I have succeeded in booting from an LS-120 disk (after copying system files to the disk); I then attempted to install windows onto the LS-120 disk but was unsuccessful. The installation process started in the normal way but after a few minutes my computer was unable to see the LS-120 drive and the install was aborted.

My experience with the LS-120 is favourable the drive is good as a backup drive although not particularly fast when compared with a hard disk or some other backup systems, although reading from a drive, for example playing a MOV or Quicktime movie seems comparable with a hard disk. As a further example of the performance you can expect backing up 223MB on a AMD233MHz machine using compression with MS backup will take 61 minutes, whereas the verification process only takes 9 minutes. Backing up the same amount of data on a SCSI removable hard disk took 18 minutes and the verification process took 5 minutes.

The LS-120 drive is good for transporting large amounts of data, storing large files or backups, although the drive's capacity and data transfer speed are a bit limiting for use as the main backup medium for a complete system. I would recommend the drive but since I purchased the drive Sony have released the HIFD 200Mb drive that is also compatible with 1.44Mb drives and Iomega has released a 250MB ZIP drive. These larger capacity drives may now be a better choice, although I suspect no drive will gain the sort of support that the 1.44Mb drive has until one format is accepted and becomes the new standard.

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