Iomega Zip Disks

Who was/is a fan of the Zip disk?

I used to be a big fan of this disk format. In the late 90's the format was really popular, with it being very popular in design circles with all design agencies using them, along with universities and colleges.

I used them at university to carry my interactive multimedia projects to and from home, as well as stuff I downloaded from the uni internet connection. The Zip disk was pretty much a universal format.

And at home I bought a SCSI Zip drive which I had connected to my A4000, and also to my PC once I bought a new one in 1998. It was a very useful drive on the Amiga as the 100MB disks were quite a large size for Amiga storage so great for backing up the Amiga's HD, as well as for general file storage.

And later I also found another use for Zip Disks. The Mr. Backup (Z64) for the Nintendo 64 console. With a built in IDE Zip Drive you could load game rom images directly on the N64 using Zip disks. So this was great as I could just copy the games to a disk and load them up.

Sadly the Zip disk format is now all but dead. Iomega tried to keep it going with larger disk formats, but none of them really took off as most people had a few 100MB disks and for larger storage CD-R was quickly becoming affordable enough to replace it.

However as a storage format I still prefer Zip Disks over writeable CDs. Why? Zip disks are in robust case and last a long time. As well as working like proper removable storage that can be reused just like the older floppy disk. In comparison CD and the optical media isn't in a protective case and can easily be scratched and damaged. And the lifespan of an optical disc is never that great in reality for a disc that gets used.

Why am I posting about Zip Disks? I was just going through some of my stuff, and in my middle desk draw I've still got all of my Zip Disks lined up. Most of them these days have N64 roms on for use with my Z64, but some still have some university and design work on them that I must have a look though.

As for accessing them. I've long since stopped using SCSI on my PCs as the format is obsolete for all but high end servers. I therefore managed to get hold of a USB Zip drive that is quite a late rare model as it is powered via the USB port so doesn't need an external PSU like most zip drives did. And the SCSI Zip drive is still in use connected to my A4000. :) Although I've not accessed a zip disk on the Amiga in some time.

I do wish there was a current storage format in common use that used cases like the Zip disks. Would be much nicer than using CD/DVD-R. Although I suppose you could argue that we now have memory sticks and fast internet connections.

I still use Zip diskd to transfer between Amiga and PC. Especially as anything over that 96MB limit should be on a CD anyway. My Miggy isn't connected to the web so any D/L's i make are on my PC and usually they are small so a ZIP disk is perfect.

Don't use them much now, but I still have zip disks with stuff on, and an IDE zip drive.

I aggree that they can be alot more conveniant than other storage methods.

I do tend to use my Jaz drive quite a bit with Macs, as both my disks are Macintosh formatted, so I use it to backup and transfer data between Macs.

I completely forgot about Jaz drives. Those were popular around the same time with video editors as the large size was idea for backing up video projects. Sadly the Jaz drives and disks were too expensive at the time to really take off as a mainstream format.

Do you all think that disk based technology is now all but dead? Now that we have ever increasing optical disc formats for long term fixed storage, and solid state memory cards for quick file transfers the need for removable disk based storage is all but gone.

Hmm yea, using cd's is not that good, they easily get damaged. I back up stuff on my external HD, but that could always crash, which would suck. What is the biggest size disk you can get??

I used a lot of Zip disks and still have about 10 of them, although I'm not using them anymore. I still have an internal and an external Zip drive in my PC with the Catweasel controller. Mainly there's old emulation stuff on them. I also had a laptop which had an integrated Zip drive, which was removable, and you could insert a normal floppy drive into the slot.

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Originally Posted by Submeg

What is the biggest size disk you can get??

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Largest Zip Disks were 750MB. These were the last drives made and quite rare compared to the most popular 100MB drives.

iomega also made a few newer removable drive systems, but most are based around HD technology rather than floppy drive technology (as the Zip was). If you are interested in finding a secure removable disk then the later drives such as Rev and Clik are worth you looking at.

Hmm, sounds interesting :) I worry about my iPod library going down and having to reenter all my cds :blink:

I've been using an iPod Nano recently (girlfriend's old one) and have managed to completely avoid needing to use iTunes. I've instead been using Media Monkey and it works perfectly. It detects the iPod being connected, showing the device with full control over the contents, and you can then just copy songs to and from the device using Media Monkey. Nice and easy, and Media Monkey is much nicer to use than iTunes ever will be. It's also easy to back up its database.

Hmm, I see I see. Can I import my playlists on2 Media Monkey from iTunes??

Well, the iPod I'm using was originally setup using iTunes on my GFs laptop, and when I connected it to my PC I could see and access the playlists and songs already on it, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Sweet, so I can just download it from their website yes?

Have a look in The Vault. I added a full version of the program in there recently. ;)

It is obvious that flash memory is now taking over.

I guess it's only a matter of time before magnetic hard drives are replaced by flash ones.

They already have been replaced in some systems. Look at the Asus Eee PC range for example. They use quite large Solid State Drives (SSD) instead of a traditional HD. The only limitation now is the sizes these can currently be compared to HD. Larger then 32GB and the price starts to escalate. Although this is starting to fall and sizes will quickly increase.

Solid State drives will also eventually remove the physical storage limitations of current harddrive platter technology. It will be some time before we see a SSD capacity equal to the current 1TB HDs, but I fully expect it to happen.