The Hi-Val SuperDisk ATAPI IDE floppy drive model FD-3120A

Emedia Professional, March, 1998 by Jeff Partyka

The great thing about floppy drives is their near-ubiquity--it seems that virtually every computer user writes to and reads from floppy disks. They're convenient, inexpensive, easy to use, and practically universal. However, as files get bigger and more complex, the 1.44MB of storage space offered by most floppy disks may no longer cut it in practical applications. To that end, alternate, higher-capacity storage solutions have emerged, ranging from Jaz, Zip, and SyQuest technology to MO and that other near-universal medium, the CD-ROM.

LS-120 technology differs from other alternatives to traditional floppy disk storage in offering backward compatibility with the 720KB and 1.44MB floppy disks with which most of us are familiar. Accommodating all traditional floppy formats and the comparably capacious 120MB disks, Hi-Val's SuperDisk ATAPI IDE Floppy Drive Model FD-3120A (a model originally developed by OR Technology) works exactly like what it is--a bigger and higher-capacity floppy drive for the PC.

Based on laser servo technology, LS-120 UHD (Ultra High Density) disks use 2,490 data tracks per inch as opposed to the 135 of 1.44MB floppies, allowing them to store 120MB of data--a whopping 125,958,144 bytes, to be exact. The disks are ideal for consumers who need to store or back up graphics, audio, video, or other types of large files. And operating the Hi-Val SuperDisk drive will be a piece of cake for anyone even remotely familiar with old-fashioned floppy drives. It works almost identically, even with old disks.

Other drives--such as SyQuest's 135ME EZ-135 or Iomega's 1GB Jaz and I00MB Zip drives--provide much of what you get in the Hi-Val LS-120 unit with one notable exception an installed base of traditional floppy drives, a PC staple. Whether compatibility with that base will give the Hi-Val SuperDisk market leverage against bigger and faster storage devices remains to be seen.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

The internal Hi-Val SuperDisk drive is plug and-play compatible with Windows 95 an Windows NT 4.0, and it comes with drivers that can support other operating systems. Although not an MO drive in the conventional sense, the Hi-Val drive does qualify as a magnetic/optic device, combining magnetic technology for reading and writing with optical technology for positioning the "dual-gap" head that allow backward compatibility. In addition to compatibility with media that stores more than 80 time the data held by a standard 1.44MB floppy, the Hi-Val SuperDisk drive boasts transfer and data rates up to five times the speed of a traditional floppy drive. And the drive is bundled with Kiss Software's DoubleZip software, which uses a 2:1 compression algorithm to support the claim that up to 240MB can actually be stored on an LS-120 disk.

Installation of the Hi-Val SuperDisk drive is simple and straightforward. It can either be installed as a slave on a primary IDE bus, or as a slave or master on a secondary bus. The drive is configured as a slave by default; in testing, the Hi-Val unit was installed as a slave on the secondary bus of a 166mHz PC running Windows 95 version 4.00.950. An Imation/3M LS-120 diskette was used for the tests.

Once installed, the drive proved efficient and easy to use. Files were written to and read from both traditional floppy and the LS-120 media with ease and comparatively rapid speed. A Properties window indicated used and free space on the disk, and overwriting functioned normally.

THESE DRIVES ARE MADE FOR BOOTIN'

The Hi-Val SuperDisk drive can be installed as a bootable drive on some systems, but BIOS upgrades may be necessary. (Award BIOS version 4.51 PG or later; American Megatrends, Inc. BIOS version 6.26.02 or later; and Phoenix BIOS version 6.0 or later can all support an LS-120 drive as a bootable device.) Actually, the drive's default jumper setting configures it as a slave on either the primary or secondary IDE controller.

Although its read speed is faster than that of traditional drives, the SuperDisk drive's write speed is still slower than that typically offered by Iomega's Zip drives and other storage alternatives with similar capacity and capability. Whether speed is more important than backward compatibility or the other advantages of the LS-120 technology is a question potential buyers should consider.

MORE OF THE SAME (BUT BETTER)

One version of the FD-3120A kit, called the FD-3120AM, comes with one piece of LS-120 media; the basic FD-3120A kit does not. The current cost of an LS-120 disk--around $15 to $20--is one of the few drawbacks that may discourage those considering an upgrade from traditional floppy disk systems. Beyond the main reason for its existence--its ability to offer a substantially increased data-storage capacity--the FD-3120A certainly doesn't offer any other hot new features. But its very similarity (and backward compatibility) to the floppy systems we all know and depend on should prove quite an attractive feature.

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