SyQuest EZ 135 Drive
The EZ 135 Drive is a 3.5" removable platter hard disk drive. It was introduced by SyQuest Technology in 1995. It had a maximum capacity of 135 MB per disk.[1][2]
A successor drive, known as the SyQuest EZFlyer, was released in 1996. It was backwards compatible with the EZ 135 disks, and could utilize a higher capacity 230 MB disk.[3]
Specifications
- Capacity: 135 MB
- Average seek time: 13.5 ms
- Burst transfer rate: 4 MB/s
- Buffer size: 64K
- Mechanism rated for 200,000 hours
Interfaces
The EZ 135 drive was available with several interfaces. The external drive was available with parallel or SCSI interfaces; the internal drive was available with IDE or SCSI interfaces.
Pricing
At introduction, the EZ 135 Drive had the following prices (in US dollars):
- 135 MB cartridge: $20.00
- EZ 135 Drive – external SCSI: $240.00
- EZ 135 Drive – internal IDE: $200.00
Sales
The EZ 135 Drive was designed to be a competitor to the Iomega Zip drive and LS-120 SuperFloppy. The original box listed several advantages:
- Much faster
- Higher capacity
- 2-year warranty
Additionally the removable hard disk cartridges included a 5-year warranty.
Unfortunately, the EZ 135 drive was not backwards compatible with other SyQuest drives, and the original capacity was never increased beyond 135 MB. The Zip drive became popular and SyQuest's sales declined.
See also
- SyQuest Technology
- Zip drive
- Jaz drive
- Orb Drive
References
- ↑ Peter H. Lewis (October 3, 1995). "New Ways to Store Backup Copies". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/03/science/personal-computers-new-ways-to-store-backup-copies.html.
- ↑ "3M Chases the Dream of Building a Better Disk". The New York Times. March 11, 1996. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/11/business/3m-chases-the-dream-of-building-a-better-disk.html.
- ↑ "Letters". The New York Times. June 4, 1988. https://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/06/circuits/letters/04lett.html. "the EZ Flyer is backward-compatible with the Syquest 135"
External links
- SYQT homepage
- (plain text) Zip drive vs. EZ 135, MIT, archived from the original on 2007-03-11, https://web.archive.org/web/20070311214825/http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/info/hdwr/zip-drive-vs-ez-135-11.txt.
- SyQuest EZFlyer Information
- "EZFlyer Disk", Encyclopedia, PC Mag, https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=EZFlyer+disk&i=42958,00.asp.
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