Re: Are flopticals drives faster than floppies

[jkeim@unlinfo.unl.edu (James D. Keim)]

Supertimer (supertimer@aol.com) wrote:
: Are floptical drives faster than floppy drives?  It would make sense
: that they would be since they operate through SCSI.  Has anyone
: compared the speed of a 1.44MB floppy in a floptical drive versus
: a regular high density drive on a GS?

Perhaps a bit.  The real speed bottleneck is how fast the drive reads 
and writes the disk not the interface.  Now, when I used a floptical 
with my Ramfast, I experienced quicker response in the Finder (and 
other programs) reading and writing high density floppies because of 
the 1 meg cache.  There was no perceptible speed increase while using 
the Apple High Speed SCSI.
 
If you find a floptical for a pretty good price I'd say go for it.  
Otherwise, don't bother.  Flopticals seem to have a problem after a 
time where they just refuse to recognize disks.  They spin and click 
quite loudly.  At that point, the floptical is as good as dead.

--James Keim