Jaz drive

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 was 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 Winchester hard disk drive technology. Essentially it was a single hard disk platter 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 -RW drives, others to the increasing capacities of hard drives at the time, and others to bad marketing on Iomega's part. The modern REV drive seems to be a new attempt to take on the market that the Jaz drive couldn't, using similar technology.

See also