Lifespan Syquest EZ135 Cartridges

[velocityg4]

I've got a bunch of old EZ135 cartridges. These are loaded with archives of old files and 68K floppies I backed up. Unfortunately, I cant find the drive itself.

I haven't looked at these for around 20 years. The old drives are a little pricier than I would expect. Otherwise I'd just buy one. Before doing so I'm curious if anyone has any idea how long the data will last on these cartridges before it starts to degrade. I'd hate to buy a drive just to find out all the data is corrupt.

 

[MacTech68]

Sorry to say, but it's 50/50 odds, either way, IMHO.

Dust is probably the biggest (controllable) threat to a Syquest drive. Media wear should be non-existant under normal operating conditions, unlike Zip, Floppy or Ls120 drives.

Keep the media in a cool, dry, dustless place (obviously) away from sources of strong magnetic radiation. This should prolong the media for as long as possible.

Don't use media that looks poorly stored and test the drive (if you get one) with media that isn't important first. Avoid shocks to the drive when running or the heads could impact the media and render both inoperative.

That's my 2c, anyhow.

 

[velocityg4]

I’m mostly concerned about magnetic degradation. I suppose I’ll just have to buy one eventually and find out. As I can’t find my original drive. I probably threw it out.

The cartridges are all in their original plastic containers. Stored in a box. Which is stored in another box. It has always been indoors in an air conditioned environment. Any magnetic fields would be from each other and some Zip disks.

 

[Opry99er]

I have a SyQuest EZFlyer. I would love to do the recovery for you. I recently bought a 2906 PCI SCSI card and use my EZFlyer to transfer files to my Mac Plus.

If you'd like to send them to me, I would gladly transfer all your data and put it in a DropBox for you to download. Please let me know!

 

[gschwab]

I have a SyQuest EZFlyer. I would love to do the recovery for you. I recently bought a 2906 PCI SCSI card and use my EZFlyer to transfer files to my Mac Plus.

If you'd like to send them to me, I would gladly transfer all your data and put it in a DropBox for you to download. Please let me know!

Hi, I have an SyQuest EZ135 but am unable to connect it to anything. I have several EZ135 cartridges, and am unsure what data is on them but am wondering if you could transfer the data from them and put it in a DropBox for me to download? Let me know. Thanks!