Upgrade Guide

These days you can take it with you. Whether you want to back up life-or-death data, shuttle projects between home and office, or share favorite digital photos with your friends, the latest removable-cartridge drives offer nearly unlimited storage possibilities.

At the low end, drives like the Iomega Zip and Imation SuperDisk offer cartridge capacities in the 100MB to 120MB range. The SuperDisk also reads standard 3.5-inch 1.44MB floppies. High-end cartridges range from the 1GB SyQuest SparQ and the 1.5GB SyQuest SyJet to the latest Iomega Jaz, which can hold 2GB. (See "A Gig in Your Pocket" in our March issue.)

Drives also vary by connection method. External parallel port drives are the easiest to install and the most portable, but they're relatively slow. SCSI versions--both internal and external--let you make fast backups, run applications directly from a cartridge, and play audio or video files. But they require a SCSI add-in card that usually costs about $100. The new internal EIDE removable-cartridge drives, meanwhile, offer a reasonable balance between performance and ease of installation. (Zip and SyJet drives are available in EIDE versions, with prices comparable to those of their internal SCSI versions.)

Prices are all over the lot, starting at about $150 for the SuperDisk, then $200 for the Zip Plus or SyQuest SparQ 1GB, $279 for an internal Iomega Jaz 1GB ($299 for an external version), $300 for a SyQuest SyJet 1.5GB, and $499 for a Jaz 2GB. Cartridge prices begin at about $15 for the Zip and SuperDisk, jumping to $33 for the SparQ, $66 for the SyJet, $99 for the 1GB Jaz, and $125 for the 2GB Jaz.

If you opt for an internal drive, check to see whether you must add drive rails (unlikely) and to see if it's easier to mount the drive before attaching the cables.

Whichever product you choose, here's how to get your drive up and running.