The Ditto drive series was a proprietary

magnetic tape data storage Magnetic-tape data storage is a system for storing digital information on magnetic tape using digital recording. Tape was an important medium for primary data storage in early computers, typically using large open reels of IBM 7 track, 7-track, ...

system released by

Iomega Iomega (later LenovoEMC) produced external, portable, and networked data storage products. Established in the 1980s in Roy, Utah, United States, Iomega sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks, including the Zip drive floppy d ...

during the 1990s. It was marketed as a

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...

device for

personal computers A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...

. They were released in several capacities ranging from the original Ditto 250 drive (250MB compressed capacity per cartridge) to the DittoMAX drive, a compatible format with compressed capacities up to 10GB per cartridge. This was accomplished by increasing the physical size of the cartridge (making it longer). Some versions of the drive were also able to read

Travan Travan is an 8 mm magnetic tape cartridge design developed by the 3M company, used for the storage of data in computer backups and mass storage. Over time, subsequent versions of Travan cartridges and drives have been developed that provide gr ...

-type tapes.

Technical aspects

Ditto internal drives were connected through the

floppy drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

channel and used MFM encoding to store data (the same method as on older floppy drives). An ISA accelerator card called the ''Ditto Dash'', providing higher speed than a stock floppy controller, was also available. Ditto external drives were connected to the

parallel port In computing, a parallel port is a type of interface found on early computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting peripherals. The name refers to the way the data is sent; parallel ports send multiple bits of data at once ( parallel ...

and offered a print-through port which allowed a

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to operate while daisy-chained to the Ditto drive. This is a feature also commonly found on an

Iomega ZIP The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 25 ...

drive. Usage of the parallel port allowed for transfer speeds (in EPP mode) of a maximum 1 MB/s.

Discontinuation

In 1999, Iomega sold the Ditto brand and technology to

Tecmar Tecmar Inc. was an American manufacturer of personal computer enhancement products based in Solon, Ohio. The company was founded in 1974 by Martin Alpert, M.D., and Carolyn Alpert. The company's first products were computerized medical equipment ...

and exited the tape drive business. The Ditto series has been discontinued. The need for higher capacities has made the Ditto series obsolete. The slow bandwidth of the Ditto also limited its usefulness compared to the

Iomega REV REV is a removable hard disk storage system from Iomega. The small removable disks store 35, 70, or 120 gigabytes (GB) and are hard-drive technology. Like a standard hard drive, the REV system uses a flying head to read and write data to a spinn ...

or the older (and discontinued) Iomega Jaz.

Models

* Tape 250 - Released in 1992. Compatible with

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's EZTape

Compatibility between tapes and drives

Notes: :R - read capable :W - write capable :F - format capable * The capacity figures used in the product names above are double the actual (native) capacity. Iomega and other manufacturers assume 2:1 data compression. * Ditto Max requires version 3.2 Pro of the Iomega backup software to support the Ditto Max 10GB tape cartridge. * Above data gathered from.

References

External links