Iomega Jaz drive

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Internal and external 1GB Iomega Jaz drives with media.

The Jaz drive was a removable disk storage system, introduced by the Iomega company. It has since been discontinued.

These drives initially came in 1 and 2 GB sizes, which were a significant increase over Iomega's most popular product at the time, the Zip drive. Unlike the Zip, which used floppy disk technology, the Jaz was based on hard disk drive technology. Essentially it was two hard disk platters in a removable enclosure, with the motors and heads in the fixed drive. The Jaz never attained as much success or market penetration as the Zip, and explanations for this vary. Some attribute it to the rising popularity and decreasing price of CD-R and CD-RW drives, others to the increasing capacities of hard drives at the time, and others to bad marketing on Iomega's part. Still others blame the drive's reliability. The modern REV drive seems to be a new attempt to take on the market that the Jaz drive could not, using similar technology.

Internal platter of an Iomega Jaz 1 GB disk with Magview - Magnetic tracks are clearly visible.

Disassembled Iomega jaz cartridge. Note the reflector-like piece in the upper-left hand corner of the right-most piece.

[edit] See also

• Zip drive
• Iomega REV
• Bernoulli drive
• Ditto drive
• Orb Drive
• SparQ drive

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