SyQuest Technology, Inc. () was an early entrant into the

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

market for

personal computers A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

. The company was founded on January 27, 1982 by Syed Iftikar who had been a founder of Seagate, along with Ben Alaimo, Bill Krajewski, Anil Nigam and George Toldi. Its earliest products were the SQ306R, a 5 MB 3.9" (100 mm) cartridge disk drive and associated Q-Pak cartridge for IBM XT compatibles. Subsequently a non-removable medium version was announced, the SQ306F. For many years, SyQuest was the most popular means of transferring large desktop publisher documents such as advertisements to professional printers. SyQuest marketed its products as able 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 Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image is ...

, fast backup, data exchange and archiving, along with confidential data security and easy portability for the road. The introduction of lower-cost options like the

Zip drive The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was announced by Iomega in 1994 and began shipping in March 1995. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities ...

which offered similar capacity, and later the

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can only be Write once read many, written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) ...

which was much less expensive once it reached mass-market, seriously eroded SyQuest's sales and the company went bankrupt in 1998. Sales of their existing inventory continued until 2003.

History

The company was named partially after the founder, Syed Iftikar, because of a company meeting wherein it was decided that "SyQuest" ought to be a shortened name for "Sy's Quest". The company announced its first product family of 3.9" (100 mm) cartridge disk drives and associated Q-Pak cartridges at the 1982

National Computer Conference The Joint Computer Conferences were a series of computer conferences in the United States held under various names between 1951 and 1987. The conferences were the venue for presentations and papers representing "cumulative work in the omputerfield ...

, surprising observers with the low price of $750 for the drive and $35 for a cartridge. They achieved limited success in government markets where removable media were required for security purposes. In 1986, SyQuest announced the SQ555 and its SQ400 associated cartridge, a 44 MB 5¼-inch removable cartridge hard disk drive, using the industry standard 130 mm disk as its medium. Double capacity versions, the SQ5110 and SQ800 were introduced in 1991. This generation of products became the ''de facto'' standard in the Apple

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

world to store, transfer and backup large amounts of data such as generated by graphic artists, musicians and engineers. SyQuest went public on the NASDAQ in 1991.

Bankruptcy

In early 1996, the company cut 60% of its workforce; later that year, company namesake Syed Iftikar was fired "in a management shakeup." After 1997, SyQuest did not fare well in the market. Their core desktop publishing customers began increasingly to use

media and

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

to transfer files, while

Iomega Iomega Corporation (later LenovoEMC) was a company that 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, i ...

s dominated the

small office/home office Small office/home office (or single office/home office; sometimes short SOHO) refers to the category of business or cottage industry that involves from 1 to 1000 workers. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBI ...

(SOHO) market. Over the period 1995 to 1997, sales declined, resulting in a series of losses. In the first quarter of 1997 those 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. They company laid off half of its staff in August 1998 before filing for bankruptcy by the end of the year. Portions of the company were purchased by

Corp. in January 1999, with SyQuest retaining the right to sell its remaining inventory on condition of renaming themselves SYQT. While the company's original ''syquest.com'' website continued to provide technical support for its original products until 2003, its rebranded ''syqt.com'' website became a digital disk drive and media retailer. By 2009 that website ceased to exist, with its domain (www.syqt.com) put up for sale in the Chinese market.

Products

Syquest's product line included such devices as the following: Fixed Media Drives (unformatted capacity): * SQ306F fixed-disk hard drive. 6.38 MB. 5.0 MBit/s. 3 m/s track-to-track. 3,547 rpm. 12,000 bpi. 306 cyl, 2 heads, 1 disc. * SQ312F fixed-disk hard drive. 12.75 MB. * SQ325F fixed-disk hard drive. 25.5 MB using MFM encoding. Specs: 612 cylinders, 4 heads, no WPC, no RWC, fastest step rate. * SQ338F fixed-disk hard drive. 38.2 MB. Supports MFM or RLL encoding. Specs: 615 cylinders, 6 heads, no WPC, no RWC, fastest step rate. Removable Media Drives (formatted capacity): * SQ306RD drive/SQ100 disk. 5 MB using MFM encoding. * SQ312RD drive/SQ200 disk (SyQuest used the SQ200 model number again for a desktop drive in 1994). 10 MB using MFM encoding. * SQ319RD drive/SQ300 disk. 15 MB using RLL encoding (10 MB using MFM encoding). * SQ2542 drive/disk – 42 MB 2.5" The Iota series. * SQ555 drive/SQ400 disk – 44 MB 5.25". internal SCSI. Also used in the Atari Megafile 44
Review in Atari Start Magazine March 1990
and sold as part of the

E-mu Systems E-mu Systems was a software synthesizer, audio interface, MIDI interface, and MIDI keyboard manufacturer. Founded in 1971 as a synthesizer maker, E-mu was a pioneer in samplers, sample-based drum machines and low-cost digital sampling musi ...

RM45 – Removable Media Storage System. * SQ5110 drive/SQ800 disk – 88 MB 5.25". internal SCSI. Compatible with SQ400 disk. * SQ5200C drive/SQ2000 disk – 200 MB 5.25" internal SCSI. The external desktop version of the SQ5200C was named SQ200, not to be confused with the earlier model SQ200 10 MB disks. Compatible with SQ400 and SQ800 disks. * SQ3105 drive/SQ310 disk – 105 MB. * SQ3270 drive/SQ327 disk – 270 MB. Compatible with SQ310 disk. *

EZ135 The EZ 135 Drive is a 3.5" removable- platter hard disk drive. It was introduced by SyQuest Technology in 1995. It had a maximum capacity of 135 MB per disk. A successor drive, known as the SyQuest EZFlyer, was released in 1996. It was backw ...

aka EZDrive 135/EZ135 disk – 135 MB 3.5" removable-disk hard drive. Competitor to Iomega's

. This was available in SCSI, IDE and parallel port versions. * EZFlyer aka EZFlyer 230 drive/EZ230 disk – 230 MB 3.5" removable-disk hard drive. EZ135 compatible. Positioned as an upgrade to the EZ135. * SyJet drive/SQ1500 disk – 1.5 GB removable-disk hard drive. Competitor to Iomega's

Jaz drive The Jaz drive is a removable hard disk storage system sold by the Iomega company from 1995 to 2002. Following the success of the Iomega Zip drive, which in its original version stores data on high-capacity floppy disks with 100 MB nominal capa ...

). *

SparQ drive The SparQ drive is a removable-disk hard drive made by SyQuest Technology. It was introduced in 1997, available as an internal or external version. The internal version utilized an Integrated Drive Electronics, IDE interface, and the external ver ...

/SparQ disk – 1.0 GB 3.5" removable-disk hard drive. Lower cost per MB than the SyJet. * Quest drive/Quest disc – a 4.7 GB removable-disk hard drive
PC Magazine definition
Available for a short time in 1998. The 5.25" removable-disk hard drives with 44 MB, 88 MB, and 200 MB capacities were mostly used on Macintosh systems via the SCSI interface.

References

External links

Syquest
at thefreedictionary.com
Interview of Syed Iftikar (SyQuest member)
at computerhistory.org {{DEFAULTSORT:Syquest Technology 1982 establishments in the United States 2003 disestablishments in the United States American companies established in 1982 American companies disestablished in 2003 Computer companies established in 1982 Computer companies disestablished in 2003 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Private equity portfolio companies

History

Bankruptcy

Products

See also

References

External links