![]() ![]() Just like a 3.5" floppy disk, once that comes undone, it is game over. Don't even TOUCH a zip drive while it is reading a disk.ĭisassembling a bad zip disk, I noticed that the adhesive that holds the magnetic "cookie" to the metal disk at the center seems to be degrading. Early internal units have a nice big silver sticker covering various openings, presumably to keep dust out. The drive heads are tiny and very easily ripped to shreds by dust, dirt, or damaged disks. I remember back when these were new, accidentally dropping a drive just a few feet on to a concrete floor - it looked fine but would no longer read disks. These disks and drives were fragile when they were new. Much like a 3.5" floppy disk, they used a spinning magnetic disk enclosed in a plastic cartridge, with a small metal shutter that gave the drive access to to the disk surface. It was basically a successor to Iomega's much larger Bernoulli drive, it competed against the SuperDisk LS-120, and it could store much more than a regular floppy drive. The original Iomega Zip 100 drive was a fairly popular storage device. For a while, vintage computer enthusiasts (Atari, Mac, Commodore) also often used SCSI Zip drives to quickly transfer data, although that has now largely been replaced by flash media interfaces.After some frustrating fiddling with a few Zip drives, just got me thinking about a few things. According to Wikipedia, some aviation companies still use Zip disks to distribute data updates for airplane navigation systems. At that point, Zip disks had already become largely irrelevant for most people.Īmazingly, though, even 25 years later, Zip is not entirely dead. ![]() In the '00s, additional competitors emerged, including DVD-R drives, broadband internet access, and removable flash USB sticks. LANs allowed large file transfers between machines without any removable media at all.Ĭompared to these new options, a proprietary removable floppy drive was far less attractive. Businesses also started installing local area networks (LANs) in ever-increasing numbers. The introduction of widespread, inexpensive CD-R drives and media-which could be read by any standard CD-ROM drive-began to eat away Zip's market share for removable backups. In fact, Iomega had trouble keeping up with the demand for both drives and disks. Zip proved phenomenally successful during its first year on the market. The other used the higher-speed SCSI interface common on Apple Macintosh computers. One used a Windows- or DOS-based PC's parallel printer port as its interface. Zip drives were originally available in two versions. At launch, it retailed for around $199 (about $337 today, when adjusted for inflation), and the disks sold for $19.95 apiece (about $34 today.) Did you know some industries still use Zip drives? Why Zip Drives Were ExcitingĪgain, in 1995, when compared with the standard floppy disk, the Zip drive felt like a revelation! It allowed people to back up their hard drives and transfer large files with ease. Now, 25 years later, we look back at Iomega's Zip technology and its history. But there's an exciting new technology: Zip drives, which can hold 100 MB and free you from floppy disks! You're stuck with slow floppy disks that only hold 1.44 MB of data. ![]()
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