Iomega PocketZip PC Card Drive

Iomega has recently announced the compatibility of their PocketZip PC Card drive
(formerly known as PocketClik!) with Compaq's Dual-Slot PC Card Expansion Pack for the iPAQ Pocket PC. The PocketZip PC Card drive is a Type II PC Card adapter/drive that accepts small, removable 40 Mb "PocketZip Disks." The drive ships with one of these disks included.

To use the PocketZip, I first had to install the software "drivers" that let the iPAQ communicate with it. I established an ActiveSync link and ran Iomega's setup utility, which took care of the rest. Don't worry--at 159K the drivers don't consume a lot of memory. Setup also installed the Iomega Tools utility in the iPAQ's Programs directory. This utility displays drive status and provides formatting, and security (see Screens 1 through 4).

Currently, the Dual-Slot PC Card Expansion Pack (and, hence, the PocketZip PC Card drive) only works with iPAQ Pocket PCs that have ROM version 1.69 or greater. You can check the ROM version on your iPAQ via the built-in Asset Viewer utility (Start/Settings/System/ Asset Viewer/Version). Also, PocketZip does not work with the original, single-slot PC Card Expansion Pack. Specifically, PocketZip won't slip all the way into its PC Card slot (the "rails" are too narrow). I would not be surprised to see Compaq fix this problem sometime this year on future versions of the single-slot PC Card Expansion Pack.

Taking it for a "spin"

Once the software was installed on my iPAQ, it was time to take it for a spin. Although the drive alone registers on the Iomega Tools utility, neither File Explorer nor the iPAQ's Storage Card utility "sees" the drive until you insert the 40Mb PocketZip Disk into it. The first thing you have to do is format the 40 Mb PocketZip Disk. I slipped it into the PocketZip drive and used Iomega Tools to do this. The "Status" tab in Iomega Tools indicated that the newly formatted disk had 38.4 Mb of useable storage.

The drive performed without a hitch, but it does have an annoying 1/2 second beep when the iPAQ powers on. I presume this is a part of the check circuitry to determine if storage media is installed. If no disk is present, the beep stops. However, if there is a disk installed, the beep is followed by the whirring of the rotating disk (~ 4.5 seconds). This same whirring sound is heard the entire time data is accessed, so if the PocketZip drive were going to be used for MP3s, I would recommend headphones to block the drive noise.

Performance

The Iomega PocketZip PC Card drive is a "removable rotating media" drive (like a floppy disk drive). (My use of "removable" here refers to the fact that the disks slip into the PocketZip drive, not the PC Card drive slipping into the card slot.). Because of this, PocketZip uses more power than CompactFlash or PC storage cards. It even uses more than the IBM microdrive, a rotating media hard drive. I was able to use the PocketZip with my iPAQ, on battery power only, for an average of 4.4 hours. I was able to use the IBM Microdrive with my iPAQ, in the Dual-Slot PC Card Expansion Pack, for an average of 11 hours. Perhaps Iomega could reduce the power draw by redesigning things so that the PocketZip used the iPAQ's internal RAM as a memory buffer for some operations. For example, if you wanted to play a music file stored on a PocketZip Disk, the PocketZip would copy it to internal memory quickly and then "spin down" to conserve the batteries.