WHAT'S THE BEST REMOVABLE DRIVE? (7.2)
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  By far the best removable right now is the EZ drive, but Zip drives look
  like they are winning the war.  The new Jazz drive is also economical if
  you are using large capacities.

       The oldest and most established format for removable media is 
  the Syquest 44 & 88 megabyte cartridge drive.  Drives are sold by many 
  different vendors for about $300 and cartridges cost around $60 
  each.  However this format is showing its age.  It's too small 
  for a complete backup of most hard drives; the cartridges are big 
  and bulky; and it's not difficult to create Photoshop, Quark, or 
  PostScript files that are larger than one of these cartridges.  
  Consequently most service bureaus also accept at least the Syquest 
  88 format.  88 megabyte Syquest drives cost about $450 and can read 
  and write but not format the older 44 megabyte cartridges.  88 
  megabyte cartridges run about $90 each so they're considerably more 
  cost-effective.  Although Syquest cartridges are the most commonly 
  used form of removable media for Macs, they do have a reputation for 
  unreliability and data corruption.  They're suitable for moving 
  large files from your Mac to a service bureau, but not for making an 
  important backup and certainly not for use as a second hard drive.  
  I do not recommend Syquest 44 and 88 megabyte drives unless you 
  must exchange disks with someone who only has a Syquest drive. 

       Syquest recently introduced a new 270 megabyte drive that is 
  not compatible with its more popular 44 and 88 megabyte drives 
  (though it will read and write the less common Syquest 105 format).  
  At only $650 for the drive and $100 per cartridge, this drive has 
  the lowest cost per megabyte of any removable media.  Furthermore 
  it's got the largest cartridge size so it's the easiest with which 
  to perform backups.  Hard drives of 240 megabytes or less can be 
  backed up to one of these monsters just by dragging the hard disk 
  icon to the Syquest icon.  However since these drives are relatively 
  new their reliability in production situations is still unknown.  
  While the size and price of these drives are very tempting I'd still 
  like to hear a few more real world experiences before I commit 
  to one.

       Somewhat more proven is the Bernoulli MultiDisk 150 from 
  Iomega.  Bernoulli has been making removable drives longer than 
  anyone, and their drives and cartridges have a reputation for speed 
  and reliability.  I would be willing to trust an important backup 
  to a Bernoulli disk or to use a Bernoulli disk as a second hard 
  drive.  A Bernoulli drive costs about $700 direct from Iomega 
  (1-800-756-3959). 150 megabyte disks cost about $110 so the cost per 
  megabyte is higher than the Syquest 270, but these drives are more 
  tested in real world uses than Syquest 270s.  An additional 
  advantage is that these drives also read and write Bernoulli 35, 65, 
  90 and 105 megabyte cartridges so you can pick a cartridge size and 
  price to fit your needs.

       Magneto-optical drives are another increasingly popular 
  technology.  They're slow but very reliable.  Depending on the drive 
  a cartridge can hold between 128 Meg to 4.6 Gigabytes.  128 megabyte 
  drives cost about getting cheaper and are available from the usual 
  selection of hard drive vendors.  Next to the reliability of the 
  media the biggest attraction of these drives is the extremely low 
  cost per megabyte ($0.32) with 128 MB disks selling for as little 
  as $40 each in quantity.  Higher capacity and higher priced optical 
  drives have been introduced with capacities ranging from 256 
  megabytes to 1.3 gigabytes and prices from $1100.  Standards 
  are still a little unclear and prices a little high among the higher 
  capacity optical drives.  I recommend waiting a few more months before 
  investing in this technology.  Regardless of standards all these 
  drives are too slow to be used as a second hard disk.  Their high 
  reliability and capacity makes them ideal for long-term 
  backups though.

       Also surprisingly popular given their limited capacity and high 
  price are "flopticals."  A floptical drive is about the size of an 
  external floppy drive, costs around $450 and can store 21 megabytes 
  of data on 3.5" disks that cost about $18 each.  Since floptical 
  drives can also read and write high density (but not 800K) floppies 
  they're a reasonable choice if you need a second floppy drive.  
  However the twenty-one megabyte disks are too small for backing up 
  large hard drives or for transporting desktop publishing files and 
  graphics.  Furthermore at only about twice the speed of on ordinary 
  floppy the media is slower than its competition.  Since higher 
  capacity drives in other formats cost about the same, I advise 
  against floptical technology.