Fujitsu DynaMo 1300SF Review

Author : Wayne : 29th August 2001

3DVelocity would like to thank Fujitsu and especially Mike Bain for their help and courtesy in providing this unit for review.

 

Installation :

I should point out that in order to cater to mainstream readers, we are unlikely to ever review SCSI devices unless they are only available using that interface. For this reason, the 1300SF will be tested using the USB interface.

Installation was, as you'd expect for a USB device, pretty straight forward, although not quite as the manual suggested. Step one is to load the USB drivers from the installation CD, then you should power down, attach the 1300SF and switch it on, then reboot. Unfortunately, the only way I could get the drive to be recognised by windows ME was to reboot with the drive switched OFF, then switch it on once windows had loaded. A minor inconvenience but an inconvenience all the same.

Next you need to run the MO Disk Formatter Utility which is also installed from the CD. From here you choose the format type you want to use from four available, being Floppy Type (FAT 16), Floppy Type (FAT 32), Hard Disk type (FAT16) and Hard Disk type (FAT32). Remarkably, the format procedure only takes around 10 to 12 seconds to complete.

Once formatted, the drive is recognised by Windows and is assigned a drive letter. At this point it can be used just as you would use your hard disk.

Going for a "seat of the pants" testing method, I decided to time some file transfers from the hard disk to the 1300SF. I ran two tests, one using 498MB of data comprised of 8,490 small files, and one using a single 708MB file which was in actual fact a Video CD which had been transferred to the HDD (though later testing showed it copied at identical speeds directly from the CD).
The time recorded for the small file test was 797 seconds, which worked out at 0.62 MB/S, or less than half the USB port's theoretical limit of 1.2 MB/S. Considering the number of files used, I was actually quite impressed with this result as I don't think I have ever tested a USB peripheral that exceeded around 0.85MB/S anyway.

The single file transfer, needing less reads/writes managed to raise the bar a little. A time of 860 seconds for the 708MB file returned a healthy 0.82 MB/s which is about all you're likely to see piped down the USB bus under most circumstances.

 

Using HDTach to perform a read test gave a result of 0.638 MB/S and an access time of 51.8ms which is some way off the quoted specs of 32.3ms (23ms seek time + 9.3ms latency). This is perhaps not surprising as no two drives are alike as has been discovered during many HDD tests, plus it also depends on the type of data being read.

 

Another factor to consider with this type of drive is running costs. Below are the average costs per Megabyte of data of the main storage options based on the prices I currently pay here. The price for the MO disks was based on the list price for a pack of 5 found HERE. Although I didn't want to waste the day looking, I couldn't easily find the disks sold singly, but I did find this same pack of 5 listed for $81.56. As this may be some special offer price, I'll go with the $119.69 (£82.94) figure for the purpose of these calculations.

At a price of 1.28 pence (1.85 cents) per Megabyte, MO falls mid table for price, but the benefits of its supreme reliability and its unmatched capacity (other than with DVD-R) have also to be taken into account and on this basis I don't think it's an unreasonable price to pay. The most expensive is the floppy disk at an extreme 12.5p while the cheapest is currently CDR at 0.076pence.

Conclusion :
If the safety of your data is paramount to you, then magneto-optical storage is the only serious consideration. Its universal standard means it can be used world-wide in drives and optical jukeboxes without fear of incompatibility or obsolescence, and its costs per megabyte are certainly reasonable for this kind of peace of mind. What spoils the party for MO drives however is the cost of the drive itself. At a price of around $370, you really need to have critical data to archive before you can take the price seriously, and this alone is enough to turn away potential buyers. Of course if you don't need a full 1.3GB capacity, you could always opt for the DynaMo 640SF USB which retails at a slightly more reasonable $299. If drive prices can be brought to a more reasonable $250 or less, then I'm sure a whole new market would open up for this solid and mature technology and all the benefits it brings.

Do I deduct points for the fact that I don't like the styling?, well no I can't really do that as it's a subjective thing, and the fact that the design is functional is what matters. I can though deduct points for the awful disk loading mechanism which not only feels old, but the force needed to load a disk means you need to hold the drive to stop it sliding turning a one handed job in to a two handed job. No problem if the drive's sat on your desk but a real ball-ache if it's up on a shelf.

All in all The DynaMo 1300SF is an impressive evolution from earlier models, and even using USB performance is as good as you're likely to get.

What I'd like to see is an improved loading mechanism, an activity light on the front of the drive and a lower price, not because it compare unfavourably with the competition, but because the competition are also some way off the mark with their prices too.

For average use running the average tasks, this type of storage offers no compelling reason to buy. For the small business or those with mission critical data to archive it's the only choice I'd currently recommend. Fujitsu have have incorporated some superb technology into the 1300SF. Their Direct Overwrite technology (DOW) reduces rewrite times by an average of 30% by performing erase and rewrite in the same pass rather than separate passes as used in conventional drives while IRISTER allows the new high density platters to be read and written to without sacrificing backward compatibility with older, lower capacity media. It's a tribute to Fujitsu's engineering prowess that so much has been added with such finesse, but it's the bread and butter functions such as disk loading that let it down.