PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Cartridge-Based Removable Hard Disk Drives

Cartridge-based removable hard disk drives were an odd product category. They provided the capacity and performance of an obsolete hard disk, but in removable form. In previous editions, we covered such cartridge-based removable hard drives as the Iomega Jaz, the Iomega Peerless, and the Castlewood ORB, but we (and the market) have now declared them officially dead.

The availability of cheap, huge, fast hard disks and such technologies as CD writers and DVD writers has killed the demand for cartridge-based removable hard drives. Cartridge-based drives still find limited use for such tasks as transferring image files and other prepress material to service bureaus, but even those uses are dwindling fast. Most people are far better served by standard hard drives in internal, external USB 2.0, or frame/carrier-based removable form and by writable technologies such as CD-RW, writable DVD, and tape.