Are Zip dirves done for?

W

whougonacall

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In 2000 when I ordered my G4 DP 500, I insisted on having internal Zip added,
as the years went by I never used it, it only stored 100mb on each zip. I ended getting a fire wire CDR by Lacie. I recently went round my mates who has a G5 with DVDR and USB memory of up to 1 gb. What should I do with my internal Zip, any ideas would be welcome.

Also what do you think about USB Memory?
 
Since you don't need it anymore, try to sell it on ebay. I bet there is a bunch of ppl out there that would love to use their old data stored on zip-media again..
I love the USB memory dongles. They are very practical mostly due to their weide compatibility. No matter if windows, mac or linux, simply plug the dongle and enjoy.
 
Zip drives are pretty much dead. 100 MB or 250 MB just doesn't cut it anymore. Add to the fact that the media is quire unreliable, it's a good thing that they're going the way of the dinosaur.
 
Fear the click of death!.
I've got one in my Sawtooth, but i haven't used it for years and years, partly because a friend of mine did have thje mythical click of death and I lost confidence in zip disks. Now I'm thinkign of ditching it to make space for an extra drive of some sort, and was probably just gonna chuck it.
 
Heh, that's what I did - chunked it. I have a 25 GB hard drive in its place - just a backup drive, so I'm not caring about speed there.

Though it is a pain to put a drive in that slot, it wasn't really made to hold one so it doesn't quite fit right. Plus, you still have the hole in the front of the case where the zip disks fit in. But it works alright for me.
 
Zips are definitely dead for most people. Iomega has a new toy being released that'll hold 35gb of uncompressed data on a small disk about the size of a credit card.

Iomega REV

They're marketing the REV drives as a backup solution, they're like Zips on steroids. From what I've seen of them they'll work fine as a ZIP replacement.

I use a 1gb secure digital card for transferring large files right now...works great. A lot cheaper than those USB key drives too, not to mention it can serve double duty with the digital camera.
 

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Thank GOD I haven't experienced the Click of Death yet. I still use my Zip disks and drives from time to time, especially on my Quadra. They have besically become to me what floppies used to be....backup for old files. Of course, I still have those pesky floppy diskettes around....some with stuff from almost 10 years ago.. :p

I also have a Jaz drive that's connected to the Quadra as well. Works great when I have to diagnose a problem on that machine. I can boot up with a Jaz cart holding System 7.5.5 and run some diagnostics when the Quadra goes silly. :p
 
mdnky said:
Zips are definitely dead for most people. Iomega has a new toy being released that'll hold 35gb of uncompressed data on a small disk about the size of a credit card…
Click to expand...

At that size you might as well go for a hard drive and skip the Iomega Rev altogether; unless the price is right of course.

It's a shame that Iomega has fallen from its former stature, but I think innovating storage solutions is very problematic and limited in scope so it's hard to innovate.

I just use two 250GB drives. It would be nice to transfer more GB on DVDs, but then it's not re-writable; unless I just haven't seen that yet in a DVD. It could happen; I am getting pale from working too much! :)
 
Where I work we do all the ordering of computers on Campus, there are still a lot of people who wont let zip and floppies go... poor souls. I used to work at the help desk and so many people would come in around finals with their papers on disks that had been destroyed, sometimes we could save them, sometimes we had to tell them the bad news.

Floppies should have died years ago.
 
I have always hated them, but used them when i wasin college when they first caught on just because all the labs at school had them. I still have a couple kicking around and i gave a couple away. I experienced the click of death several times since i delt with hundreds of these disks and about 40-50 different drives. one of the print shops i worked at had a drive and people always brought in jobs on the zip disks. This was all back in the 96-98ish time frame. have only used them a few times since i graduated and i thank the maker everyday for that.
 
The anti-Zip sentiment here is amazing. As I see it, they still have their niche. I work in a University, where 250-MB or 750-MB internal drives are built into all Windows boxes on campus. I frequently work on PowerPoint presentations and Word documents at work and bring them home saved on a 250-MB disk, where I can access them using the Zip 250 USB drive connected to my iMac.

Other than USB flash media, the Zip drives are the best solution for rewritable media for cross-platform use. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Those flash drives, and not CD-RW's, are what's making the Zip format obsolete.

With that being said, I definitely cover myself. Iomega sync (http://www.iomega.com/software/sync.html) is a nifty windows app that provides a backup to my files which I put on network drive space at work. So if my drive or media fails, I don't lose my entire career's work!
 
back in 97-98 zip drives were the bomb. I had an external scsi version and the disks were faster than the internal hd on my powerbook 540c that was upgraded to a ppc 603e 117mhz. keep in mind though that the 500 series first came out in 94 and used the fastest ibm 2.5" that was out. I used to boot os 7.6.1 ans 8-8.1 on zip disks all the time.

zip drives are not practical any longer and are still way more expensive per mb than cdr or dvdr.
 
blue&whiteman said:
zip drives are not practical any longer and are still way more expensive per mb than cdr or dvdr.
Click to expand...

that may be the case but cdrs are not rewriteable. I suppose if you have a constant need to xfer files to and fro different locations and they are not large files then they would still work great, but i deal with alot of files that would not even fit on zip disks. I would rather go with a jaz disk if i had to pick one.
 
HateEternal said:
Floppies should have died years ago.
Click to expand...


I thought they did die, and Zip Media is on the way out, the only reason why i got one for my Powerbook is if i'm doing work on a ZIP disk but 90% of the time now i'm doing work on my Powerbook and transfering it to my USB drive and thats it. But the wintel's at my school don't have an accessible USB port :mad: for us mac users :)


I haven't seen anyone use floppies in ages. ::ha::
 
Jeffo said:
that may be the case but cdrs are not rewriteable. I suppose if you have a constant need to xfer files to and fro different locations and they are not large files then they would still work great, but i deal with alot of files that would not even fit on zip disks. I would rather go with a jaz disk if i had to pick one.
Click to expand...

even cdrw and dvdrw is still much less per mb than zip. my superdrive writes dvdrw at 4x which is 5.5 MB/sec. much better than zip.
 
I bought an external SCSI back in 96 when they first came out. Used them religiously because my internal HD on my performa was only 250MB (man those were the days). When I got my G3 I got a SCSI card and installed the drive, and a few months later in 99 got a CDRW. I used the zip to bring files to-and-from school but that was it. When 2001 came, I never used a Zip disc again. I started having the click of death problem, files took FOREVER to transfer (20 minutes for less than 100 MB!) so I just kissed 'em goodbye, yelled out SAYONARA, and that was it.

Where I work, people STILL insist on using floppy discs. When confronted with that situation I suggest that people get zip discs (PC users). If people have zip discs I tell them to bring a backup on a USB thumb drive or something---just in case
 
USB thumb drives are far more reliable than Zips, far more durable, and just feel cooler. I think these are what's killing Zips. I know many of the undergraduates in my uni are using these now instead of Zips.
 
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