SyQuest Technology

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SyQuest 44 MB removable disk cartridge.

SyQuest Technology, Inc., now known as SYQT, Inc., was an early entrant into the removable hard disk market for personal computers. The company was started in 1982 by Syed Iftikar who named it partially after himself in a derivation of "Sy's Quest". Its earliest products were 3.9" (100mm) removable hard drives, and 3.9" (100mm) ruggedized hard drives for IBM XT compatibles and military applications. Some of their early fixed drives appear to be rebranded Seagate drives, especially if you compare the drive lists on this data recovery site with this product table.

For many years SyQuest held the market, particularly as a method of transferring large desktop publisher documents to printers. SyQuest aim their products to give personal computer users "endless" hard drive space for data-intensive applications like desktop publishing, Internet information management, pre-press, multimedia, audio, video, digital photography, fast backup, data exchange, archiving, confidential data security and easy portability for the road.

In the years since 1995 they have not fared as well in the market, while Iomega cornered the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) market. Over the period 1995 to 1997 sales declined resulting in a series of losses. In the first quarter of 1997 these losses had been reduced to $6.8 million with net revenues increasing to $48.3 million. This compares to a net loss of $33.8 million, or $2.98 per share, on net revenues of $78.7 million for the same period the year before.

Syquest filed for bankruptcy in late 1998, and portions of the company were subsequently purchased by Iomega Corp. in January, 1999. SYQT retained the rights to sell their products, allowing them to continue operations.

A significant reason for the losses was due to quality issues with the a series of products, amongst others the SparQ Drive, that caused a large portion of the drives to malfunction within just a few months of operation.

Syquest's product line included such devices as the following: (The 5.25" removable cartridge drives with 44MB, 88MB, and 200MB capacities were mostly used on Macintosh systems via the SCSI interface.)

SQ306RD drive/SQ100 cartridge. 5mb using MFM encoding.
SQ312RD drive/SQ200 cartridge. 10mb using MFM encoding.
SQ319RD drive/SQ300 cartridge. 15mb using RLL encoding (10mb using MFM encoding).
SQ325F fixed drive. 25MB using MFM encoding. Specs: 612 cylinders, 4 heads, no WPC, no RWC, fastest step rate.
SQ338F fixed drive. 38MB. Supported MFM or RLL encoding. Specs: 615 cylinders, 6 heads, no WPC, no RWC, fastest step rate.
SQ555 drive/SQ400 cartridge - 44MB 5.25". internal SCSI. SQ5110 and SQ5200C compatible. Also sold as part of the E-mu Systems RM45 - Removable Media Storage System.
SQ5110 drive/SQ800 cartridge - 88MB 5.25". internal SCSI. SQ5200C compatible
SQ5200C drive/SQ2000 cartridge - 200MB 5.25" internal SCSI. The SQ2000 is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the SQ200.
SQ3105 drive/SQ310 cartridge - 105MB. SQ3270 compatible.
SQ3270 drive/SQ327 cartridge - 270MB.
EZ135 aka EZFlyer 135 drive/EZ135 cartridge - 135MB 3.5" removable cartridge drive. Competitor to Iomega's Zip drive. This was available in both SCSI and parallel port versions.
EZFlyer aka EZFlyer 230 drive/EZ230 cartridge - 230MB 3.5" removable cartridge drive. EZ135 compatible. Positioned as an upgrade to the EZ135.
SyJet drive/SQ1500 cartridge - 1.5GB removable cartridge drive. Competitor to Iomega's Jaz drive).
SparQ drive/SparQ cartridge - 1.0GB 3.5" removable cartridge drive. Lower cost per MB than the SyJet.
Quest drive/Quest disc - a 4.7GB removable hard drive. Press release. PC Magazine definition. Available for a short time 1998.