Castlewood ORB
More info
- Creator
- Castlewood Systems
- Released
- 1999
- Type
- Removable magnetic disk
- Capacity
- 2.2 GB / 5.7 GB
Castlewood's 1999 removable 2.2 GB magnetic disk — built by ex-Iomega engineers to beat Zip and Jaz on price, and beaten by CD-R and USB.
Castlewood Systems, founded by defectors from Iomega, launched the ORB in 1999 as a cheaper high-capacity rival to the Zip and Jaz. Its 3.5-inch cartridge held 2.2 GB (later 5.7 GB) and used — unusually for removable media — GMR heads and PRML channels borrowed straight from the hard drive to reach disk-like density.
It shipped in EIDE, SCSI, USB and parallel-port versions and undercut the Jaz per megabyte. But it arrived just as cheap CD-R, and then USB flash, made removable magnetic cartridges pointless, and Castlewood folded around 2004. A footnote in the same crypt as SyQuest and the Bernoulli Box.