Are Zip Drives Useless?

11 posts / 0 new
Last post
Offline
Last seen: 15 years 10 months ago
Joined: Oct 28 2006 - 01:26
Posts: 51
Are Zip Drives Useless?

Are Zip drives pretty much useless when it comes to newer technology like Flash drives? Or do they still serve a real purpose?

coius's picture
Offline
Last seen: 10 years 2 weeks ago
Joined: Aug 25 2004 - 13:56
Posts: 1975
depends

on an older mac with no hard drive, you can substitute the drive with a Zip for a small OS Holder. It's best for when the hard drive in it is dying. Personally, contrary to what people say to me, i find the Jaz drives better than people think. They can boot windows on 2GB (even XP) and allows me to boot off of it easily with a complete package, plus it's fast (enough)

dankephoto's picture
Offline
Last seen: 9 months 1 week ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 1899
worse than useless

I've got some sharp nails for you to stick into your own eyes as an alternative to using wholly unreliable Zip disks for data storage. Oh, unless you meant to use the Zip disks as clay pigeons for some trap shooting, then - never mind. Blum 3

dan k

Offline
Last seen: 14 years 9 months ago
Joined: Jan 13 2007 - 19:57
Posts: 208
I agree "worthless"

Hey,

I haven't used a zip disk or drive since 2000. CDs pretty much killed them. These days I use CDs as I used to use floppies but CDs are way more reliable than the dreaded zip disk. I've hated them for a long time.

William

www.williamahearn.com

eeun's picture
Offline
Last seen: 1 year 1 day ago
Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 17:34
Posts: 1895
Click of Death

I've got a stack of the stinkers in my basement. Also a Syquest EZ-135 which was infinitely more reliable, though harder to track down media locally.

To their credit, I've had better luck with the built-in zips on the G3/4s than the evil external drives, which seemed to fall to the click-of-death if you looked at them funny, if it was raining out, or if they were hooked up to a computer.

Offline
Last seen: 15 years 10 months ago
Joined: Oct 28 2006 - 01:26
Posts: 51
I was mostly wondering becaus

I was mostly wondering because I'm thinking of modding my G3 and replacing the Zip Drive with a Fan Controller(as its overclocked with no temp probes.) Sounds Like I'll carry on then with this project. Found a cool bezel too. Anyway thanks for your input. I personally have only used my zip drive once in like 6 months and it was just to see what was on some disks.Hilarious Answers though Smile

Jon
Jon's picture
Offline
Last seen: 12 years 10 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 2804
My story is not so hilarious,

My story is not so hilarious, but I was working on a CS352 (C++ w/ data structures) project and was using a Zip disk as a big floppy to go between the CS lab and home (dial-up at the time). The Win2k lab workstation crashed on me and took out my files. Two days before it was due. And I was dumb and it was my only copy. So I tried to re do it all, but I couldn't make the code of the algo work on time. If you code didn't compile and work then you automatically lost 30%. It compiled, but it didn't work. Thus, I was mad at both the faulty Win2k and Zip... and myself.

iantm's picture
Offline
Last seen: 3 years 2 weeks ago
Joined: Apr 2 2005 - 14:01
Posts: 709
Ah, the Zip drive ...

that brings back memories. Got one during the big craze when anybody who was somebody had one. Yeah, it was 97. Good times, I never ran into issues with the Zip drive though. My dad had the Parallel port zip on his PC, and I had the SCSI model. I have a bunch of machines in my house that have Zip drives, but no media oddly enough now. (8600/300, beige g3, agp g4)

It's odd how quickly the CD-R killed the Zip drive.

dankephoto's picture
Offline
Last seen: 9 months 1 week ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 1899
re: It's odd how quickly the CD-R killed the Zip drive.

Not odd at all, the Zip is essentially a big-capacity floppy with all the floppy's inherent lack of reliability. If you had any choice at all, who in there right mind is gonna archive anything worth saving on floppies, then or now??!?

At least with inexpensive floppies you could minimize you exposure to data loss by saving your data on multiple disks. But eventually of course files got so big floppies were no longer practical. Zips had their moment, but once CD-R mechanisms' prices swung down into an affordable range, those CD-R users never looked back.

Heh, I recall my first burner, bare SCSI mechanism cost $350 and could burn at the magnificent speed of 4x. But it allowed me to reliably back up whole HDs in one clip for dirt cheap (even when paying well over $1/disk), simply astounding value. Cr@p Zips couldn't compete with that formula, reliability and value.

dan k

MaxTek's picture
Offline
Last seen: 1 year 5 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 702
Hawaii Cruiser's picture
Offline
Last seen: 7 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Jan 20 2005 - 16:03
Posts: 1433
Boy, you guys are such snobs.

Boy, you guys are such snobs. I use zip disks quite often. Not for archiving, of course. Does anyone do that anymore? I'm sure there are lots of people on the planet who still do because they're super frugal and haven't wanted to spend any more money on technology since they bought that G3 with a built-in zip drive back in 1997, or because they don't know any better--which I'm sure there's many of--people who usually won't ever show up at Applefritter.

I use them simply to transfer files between the many computers in my house, some of which aren't hooked up on the LAN. They work fine for that, and I've been too stingy to go pick up a USB flash drive, and without front USB ports, the flash drive can be a hassle, even if it's a lot quicker on the read and write. And when you've only got one flash drive, then you either have to erase all the time, or get a big one that can get cluttered with files. With a bunch of zips, you find you may still have files on one which you realize you want later and don't have to go search for it on the computer, even though you're not intentionally archiving it on the zip. No big deal.

Archiving on CDs can turn into a big mess of a different type. Finding files on CD archives can be very time consuming. I still rely mostly on my harddrives.

Log in or register to post comments