Disk rotation speed is 5400rpm (rotations per minute), magnetoresistive heads... What could it be? Ahard disk drive? Not exactly! And to be more precise - exactly not! :-) It is the Castlewood product,named ORB, which uses removable media (ORB disks). In fact, Iomega company happened to win most ourattention in this field, probably due to its so widely spread Zip and some popular problems connectedwith it (such as click of death). However, even if we don't take into account magnetooptical drive thisproduct is not the only one in the market.

The ORB drive can boast considerably cooler and undoubtedly more progressive technologies than Iomegaproducts. These technologies allowed achieving 2.2GB capacity for a 3" disk (just for you to compare: Jazhas 2GB) and quite an affordable price for the drive itself (as to the manufacturer's site,it is available at $200, and in Moscow you can get it for just a bit more than $200) and for the ORB disks($30). As a result, ORB provides the cheapest 1MB of stored info and is beyond any competition. Then whydidn't Castlewood company conquer the whole market at once? We have an impression that they are so greatlycarried away with new technologies that they have simply forgotten: it's not enough to make a product -they have also to sell it somehow, and better with some profit. Just if you are interested you may visitIomega web-site and compare it with that of Castlewood. As the sayingis, feel the difference! But all this is just lyrics, and it's high time we set down to real work. To tellthe truth, we wanted to touch this mysterious device for quite a while already, but unfortunately we couldfind only the external version with LPT interface. Frankly speaking, we greatly doubt if the device isreally worth manufacturing and buying, because only a Sacher Masoch admirer can be willing to try saving2GB through a parallel port. However, even a complete masochist can get tired of waiting for the processto be finished. As for us, we would find it much easier to remove the HDD from the case every time we need totransport a large piece of data. But the victory day has finally come and our patience was rewarded:the "normal" internal device with ATAPI (IDE) arrived in Moscow. Of course, we couldn't misssuch a great opportunity and tested it right away. By the way, pretty soon we are expecting anotherexternal device with USB interface. As soon as we get it, we'll let you know ;-)

Specification

Well, let's take a look what the manufacturer says about its product:

Well, what seems to strike as most attractive here? Of course, the speed difference between LPTversion and all the rest, which proves the opinion we shared above. Besides, we would also like tomention that 2.2GB capacity can be achieved on IBM compatible PCs only with FAT32 and NTFS file systems,note that for NTFS it is possible only in fixed drive mode. If you are using FAT16 system the capacity willbe restricted to 2.16GB (the disks are sold formatted in FAT16).

Installation and Use.

So, we had two devices - the notorious external LPT version and the internal IDE one. Getting a bitahead of the story we would like to say that we didn't test the first one (what's the use of taking theLPT-port speed: it is not a secret to anyone).

   

The external version has a pretty standard package: beautiful box, beautiful originally designeddevice, power supply unit, a cable, a floppy disk with the drivers, and an ORB disk with software tools.However, we were very pleased with the package of the internal device. Though the box design didn'timpress us that much, it contained not only the drive itself and ORB disk with the utilities, but alsoa rather detailed installation and use manual, the 3"-to-5" section converter and even two packsof screws!

Before installing the device let's look through the manual, since we are not familiar with the productyet. The contents of the manual slightly put us on our guard. In the end there is the description of theLED signals of the diode the drive is equipped with. On the one hand, it is very pleasant that the numberof red light flashes (as the number of BIOS beeping sounds) lets you detect the problem. And on the otherhand, the manual says that if the red diode is activated, it means that the device is unable to eject thedisk, which actually discourages from inserting the disk into the drive. And what to do if it decides notto return it? Then you will just get another 2.2GB HDD for your home PC! However, we managed to overcomeour fear and started connecting the device. The installation ran without any problems. Windows 98recognized the IDE model without any drivers, while the LPT version of course needs the specialsoftware. Then we tried to insert the disk. The disk case is quite comfortable though we likedthe ordinary boxes much more.

The disk itself can be compared to Zip in terms of its size, namely its depth, which can be seen onthe picture:

We should also say that the patented disk protect systems are really impressive. At least, it is thefirst drive with removable media we have ever tried, which doesn't let you touch the disk surface "withbare hands". However, here we faced the first very unexpected problem - the disk didn't want to getinserted! As it stood in the manual the disk should be inserted with a hand moving forwards and downwards.But the problem is that the lid also goes forwards and downwards, probably to provide better disk protection.So, we tried to push the disk inside and the lid in its turn tried to push it out of the drive and itsucceeded pretty often, we should say. The first time we managed to finally achieve our aim was onlywhen we involved the second hand to hold the lid open. And later on our experience sometimes (not always!)allowed us to insert the disk with only one hand. In general, not so convenient. The external model isdeprived of this drawback, because the lid is opened upwards, though it also requires certain skill. Well,nothing to do here: this is the payment for high data density. Another inconvenience connected with highdata density is long wait state during disk loading and ejecting. After you have pressed the "Eject" buttonit takes about 10 seconds before you receive the disk. Almost the same time is required for the disk to getready for work. And this is the last trifling drawback. As for the serious disadvantages, we didn't noticeany of them at all.

And in conclusion, a few words about software supplied together with the drive. The software set isquite standard: a couple of Backup versions including the triple compression, which ideally allowsstoring a reserve copy, of a 6.4GB harddisk for instance (at least 5GB of data including archivesand jpeg-images fit perfectly we checked it), Rescue Disk, the program creating the ORB disks catalogue,the Drive Status program informing about the disks and drive status and the program, which allowschanging the waiting time before it turns to sleep or spin down time mode. Looks as if the ORB driveis fully armed. And again, if you don't like all this stuff, you can use the standard Windows means aswell as the soft from Symantec, for instance. Summing up, we may say that after the disk insertingoperation is over, you can enjoy working with the drive. So, let's pass over to the tests.

Benchmarks

Since this was a very serious device, we approached its testing also very seriously, as we usually do incase we test a "large" HDD.

The testing system was configured as follows:

• ASUS P2B mainboard (Intel 440BX, BIOS version -1008);
• Intel Pentium II 400MHz CPU;
• 128MB SDRAM SEC PC100;
• ASUS V2740 graphics card (Intel 740);
• Windows 98.

The disk was formatted with FAT16 file system. For our tests we utilized the standard set of benchmarks:WinBench 99 (Business WinMark and Disk Inspection Tests) and Adaptec ThreadMark. Disk CPU Utilization testcan be carried out in two modes: with fixed read rate and with maximally attainable read rate. Thetests were run with the fixed read rate of 4000000Byte/sec. All the tests were repeated five timesand hence the tables contain the average values. Since this device doesn't support Ultra DMA the testingwas made in DMA mode 2 (max data transfer rate - 16.6MB/sec) with Windows DMA support on. The tests wererun only for "cold" disks, which means that we let the disk cool down to room temperature before eachnext benchmark try. Before carrying out a test the disk was formatted with DOS format command. To compareour hero with we chose one of the most widely spread disks, which we regard as one of the best ones -Quantum Fireball CR with 5400rpm rotation speed. The results obtained look as follows:

Here is the graph showing the ORB Internal IDE data transfer rate:

If you refer yourself to those, who are interested in High-End Disk WinMark 99, here are the details:

Well, what can we say now? Frankly speaking, we were struck dumb with the results achieved. It's clearthat the data density on Quantum is higher, and besides, it is a "real" hard disk drive, which simplyimplies that it should have better results. But we expected them to be at least 10 times better! And toour great surprise and delight the difference made only 3 times and only in High-End Disk WinMark, wherea lot depends on the heads positioning speed, which should be lower by the drive with removable media. So,ORB made us a very pleasant surprise. The data transfer rate graph and namely its unusual shape is alsoworth mentioning: not a descending stepping graph but a V-shaped one. That is why ORB drive shows evenbetter results than Quantum in the last sectors. Unfortunately, we can't explain why it happens so, butwe will try to find out the truth, which appears quite interesting.

Adaptec ThreadMark. As usual, the table contains the average data transfer rate inMB/sec as a result of 64 tests, during which the read and write operations are carried out in blocks of512 Byte, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64KB in one, two, three or four threads simultaneously, with standardWin32 API function calls. The second column represents CPU utilization during the tests:

And again the result is quite good and corresponds to the level achieved by "normal" three-fouryear old harddisks. And they are still in use as they were before.

Conclusions

And the conclusion sounds as follows: Castlewood company successfully took advantage of the moderntechnologies and made a really cool product. Those, who need to transport large amounts of data includingmultimedia data as well, will undoubtedly decide on this device. And the info stored on the removablemedia drive can be accessed directly from it without copying it anywhere since the appropriate speedmakes it not only possible, but also very convenient.

Highs

• Large capacity
• Acceptable speed
• Affordable price
• Extremely low cost for storing
• Easy installation

Lows

• What do we need to save on a 2.2GB disk and to carry with us all the time?
• LPT model is an attempt to combine incompatible things.

Resume

If you need to transport large amounts of data, we would recommend buying an internal model with IDEinterface.