SyQuest EZFlyer 230 review

SyQuest cartridges of one kind or another have been popular for years with professional graphics users.

As their capacity and reliability have increased, they've also become suitable for general backup purposes. The EZFlyer is the latest addition to the range of removable cartridge drives, and uses new 230Mb cartridges as well as supporting the 135Mb units associated with the earlier EZDrive.

The disk-based technology is much faster and more reliable than that used by tape-based backup drives, and the cartridges carry a lifetime guarantee. This makes them ideal for archiving files which may need to be accessed quickly but take up too much space on your main hard disk, or are too important to be left in only one place. The EZFlyer's parallel-port interface means it can be easily attached to almost any PC, including notebooks, and swapped between, say, home and work PCs.

Installation is very simple. Once the drive has been plugged into the mains and the PC's parallel port, all that remains is to switch on the computer and install a Windows driver.

The drive then appears as an extra hard disk with a drive letter (in both Windows and DOS), which appears after the CD-ROM (eg E:) so your setup isn't messed up. Files can then be copied to folders on the cartridge, and directories can even be shared over an office network. If your printer normally connects to the parallel port, it can be re-attached to a pass-through port on the back of the EZFlyer.

The backup software included is rather clumsy; Windows' own backup application will do the job with less hassle. Backing up and comparing 30Mb of assorted files to a normal IDE hard disk took us 30 minutes, while the same operation lasted just over one minute longer with the EZFlyer, and no errors were suffered. A forthcoming SCSI-interface version will be faster still, but even the parallel-port drive is fast enough to run applications comfortably straight from a cartridge. This is impossible with tape drives.

The 230Mb cartridges work out cheaper per megabyte than a good 840Mb hard disk. If your desktop PC is severely lacking storage space, you still can't beat a straight internal hard disk. But when you balance performance with the convenience of being able to carry your files around or store them safely away from thieves, the EZFlyer looks excellent value for money.

230Mb cartridge £21 (£25).