Draft:Avatar Shark Drive

= Avatar Shark Drive = The Shark format was released in 1995 by Avatar Systems, a small corporation founded in 1991 with little known history about it, as it only made drives for OEM manufacturers. The format initially got good reviews by the press, but the format never caught on, falling victim to Iomega's monopoly in 1998 when Avatar filed for bankruptcy.

History
The Shark launched in 1995, with the format having great reviews. The format came in compact 2.5" diskettes, branded by Avatar as HardDiskettes. Despite the good reviews by the press, the format failed to catch on. Avatar tried boosting the format by making ad campaigns, but then resorted to price cuts, with the lowest being 199$ in 1998, where a mail rebate would be held. But, Avatar filed for bankruptcy in late 1998 after failing to repay customer rebates.

Technology
The Shark format was based off of SyQuest's removable hard drive technology, where the spindle, and read/write head was located inside the drive, while the platter, a 2.5" high density 250-megabyte diskette, was enclosed in a stainless steel case, with minimal dust entering both the drive and the platter. In contrast to SyQuest, the Shark format was more reliable, as dust was kept to a minimum, while SyQuest's offerings were plagued by not only dust destroying sectors, but other fatal problems as well, leading to a better longevity with Avatar's offering. However, a big con was that the drive itself could not be moved with a disk inside, as a reviewer noted in 1997 that moving the drive with a disk inside destroys both the disk, and the drive.

The Shark format in the OEM scene
The Shark format was only included in an obscure OEM, Dauphin, which renamed the format into the DynaDrive, destroying Avatar's attempt at brand recognition, and caused brand confusion as Dauphin DynaDrive disks didn't exist, so buyers of Dauphin products never got around to using the drive itself.