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Zip Drive Silence
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I am/was not aware that it is possible to force a zip drive to spin continuously. I recall having tried very hard to do this for some benchmarking that I wanted to try out. No joy. Given that the head is in physical contact with the media, I was not surprised that the engineers at Iomega had made that choice. But now it seems that I may have drawn incorrect conclusions, and there may be a firmware rev (for example) that does allow such a thing.
Are you sure that it is spinning autonomously? That is, are you truly not seeing the drive light blink during this time? The "normal" way a zip disk operates is that it continues to spin for some number of seconds after the most recent access. Then it spins down. If accesses come at a high enough rate, the zip will keep spinning. Is it possible that you are running some sort of background app (or have a virus) that keeps pinging the disk?
Are you sure that it is spinning autonomously? That is, are you truly not seeing the drive light blink during this time? The "normal" way a zip disk operates is that it continues to spin for some number of seconds after the most recent access. Then it spins down. If accesses come at a high enough rate, the zip will keep spinning. Is it possible that you are running some sort of background app (or have a virus) that keeps pinging the disk?
It does this whether it is hooked up to a computer or not. If I plug it into power and insert a zip disk, it makes noise. I thought that it was just a matter of it not being connected to a computer, but it does the same thing when it's connected to my SE running 6.0.5 or 6.0.7. I'm not using multifinder, not booting off of the zip, and not even running any apps.
The zip seems to work otherwise. It's able to read and write the media.
The zip seems to work otherwise. It's able to read and write the media.
My SCSI Zip 100 Model: Z100S2 Seems to have a default power-save mode (spin-down) of about 15 minutes, whether startup disk, slave or n/c at all. If you take your disconnected ZIP and pop in a disk, it should spin-down after about 15 minutes to be completely silent. If it does not, leave it in to see how long it remains spinning. Report back the results with your particular model number. As Tom Lee indicates, Zip Tools, or some other utility may well be able to alter the driver's defaults for continuous operation, as well as shortening the wait-time for power-save. The same disk on my USB drive, results in power-save within several seconds of last disk access and is absolutely silent (otherwise it does make humming and clicking noises). So I would expect the default drive behavior to assert itself when disconnected.
Page 13 of this document confirms it:
http://download.iomega.com/english/manuals/english/en181102.pdf
Page 13 of this document confirms it:
http://download.iomega.com/english/manuals/english/en181102.pdf
Then there is definitely something wrong with your drive. If it does not spin down after 15 min. when unaffected by a system driver, I can think of no other reason. UNLESS ...
Tom, is it possible the Iomega Tools the linked manual refers to in order to change the default sleep times actually writes something to the physical drive hardware itself? I assumed the changes were written to the system driver preferences in software. Could the changes to affect the drive behavior be written to the disk driver as well, thereby stipulating power-save settings even when the disk is disconnected?
OK, I hate little problems like these that I take for granted over the years. So, not a whole answer but an answer: I downloaded and ran the latest Iomega Ware disk tools, since my 4.2.1 Disk Tools did not shed any light on the power-save settings. What I found is, without a disk inserted in the drive, a control panel under OS 9 allows you to set the spin down time between 1 minute and 30-60 minutes of last disk access (depending on drive model), with 15 minutes being the default. It is unclear to me whether it is the system driver that is being updated or some firmware or "PRAM" on the drive itself (but definitely not the disk): without powering off the drive and switching it to another Mac, I was back to the default 15 minutes which suggests the system driver is what's modified. However, Tom Lee's initial thought that the Zip cannot be made to spin indefinitely seems validated (and indeed otherwise harmful to what is essentially floppy disk media).
Based on this info, I would suggest your disconnected drive MUST spin down within a maximum of 30 to 60 minutes or it indeed has a problem.
Ack. Sometimes I feel like I have poor forum communications skills. I was trying to say that I found the same results as the quoted text. IE, it *does* spin down after 15 minutes like you suggested it should.
Anyway, the rest of your post is helpful none-the-less. Now I have to turn my attention back to booting, and all that, and maybe I'll remember what my plan was to do with the setup once I got it working, which is completely lost to me now.
Nathan
Is the Zip drive really just a big floppy drive? My understanding is that the Zip drive was a tech spin off from Iomega's earlier Bernoulli Box. Unlike a floppy disk, the drive head in a Bernoulli/Zip drive is not in constant contact with the disk media. The rotation of the disk generates a "wedge" of air that lifts the disk head away from the media. During active use, the disk head does not touch the disk media; the head only touches the disk when the disk is "parked" or "spun down" or starting up.
Thus we can conclude that constant rotation of a Zip drive is normal behaviour. If the disk stops spinning, the disk head must come in physical contact with the disk; either in a "parking region" or a random part of the disk, close to the last read/write. When a disk is "spun down", the head is touching the physical disk, so wear to that disk region is inevitable. [Hard disks use mechanical rather than aerodynamic systems to separate the disk head and media; they can automatically "park" anywhere; exceptions include early Mac drives that provide "disk parking" utilities.]
How does that affect vintage Mac users? Unfortunately, we don't know the algorithm that the Zip drive uses to determine whether to park or not. Is it just 15 minutes of non-use or something else? If I shut down more frequently, will I suffer from disk wear?
Although Iomega pioneered the Bernoulli Box, Zip drives don't use this technology. I believe that the reason is cost.
So, Iomega chose to place the heads in a Zip in direct contact with the disk surface, just as in an ordinary floppy. That's why running the drive continuously guarantees rapid wear of the media (and of the heads, eventually).
So, Iomega chose to place the heads in a Zip in direct contact with the disk surface, just as in an ordinary floppy. That's why running the drive continuously guarantees rapid wear of the media (and of the heads, eventually).
Thanks for the corrections, Tom and Mac128. After posting, I recalled from the "Click of Death" stories that Zip drives have a head retract mechanism. This article confirms Tom's statement that the Zip isn't Bernoulli:
http://www.byte.com/art/9508/sec11/art9.htm
Unfortunately, we are still stuck with the riddle about when it is best to sleep a Zip drive. Disk head land off and take off is certain to cause media wear, but so does constant access. If you use your Zip cartridge as a Mac system disk, inevitably some cylinders/sectors will be accessed more frequently. Does the Iomega algorithm for disk access versus wear account for use as a system disk?
http://www.byte.com/art/9508/sec11/art9.htm
Unfortunately, we are still stuck with the riddle about when it is best to sleep a Zip drive. Disk head land off and take off is certain to cause media wear, but so does constant access. If you use your Zip cartridge as a Mac system disk, inevitably some cylinders/sectors will be accessed more frequently. Does the Iomega algorithm for disk access versus wear account for use as a system disk?
I don't think that there is any wear-leveling going on in a zip. First, it would almost certainly require the cooperation of the OS to do so, and performance would suffer as well. Given how slow the zip is to begin with, the designers were probably reluctant to implement anything that increased access times.
That's just pure speculation on my part, of course.
That's just pure speculation on my part, of course.
Tom, I was thinking about OS level software.
In spite of my distaste for Iomega's software, I was prepared to reconsider it, should it provide longer disk or head life. If using an Iomega system level driver extended life of either, it would be worth investigating further how to use this on a 68K Mac/System 6 or earlier. By definition, a system level driver understands the OS and can store information about the usage pattern of a cartridge on the individual cartridge or on the system disk. Given the general smartness of Iomega's developers, I guess that they considered that idea and many others.
In spite of my distaste for Iomega's software, I was prepared to reconsider it, should it provide longer disk or head life. If using an Iomega system level driver extended life of either, it would be worth investigating further how to use this on a 68K Mac/System 6 or earlier. By definition, a system level driver understands the OS and can store information about the usage pattern of a cartridge on the individual cartridge or on the system disk. Given the general smartness of Iomega's developers, I guess that they considered that idea and many others.
