Help! 100mb Zip Drive

[LunarRay]

I have an Iomega 100mb external Zip drive with the Parallel Port connector and a desktop what don't have a Parallel Port!... [did I mention the 150 disks with lots of photos and music?] ...

So, I went to Fry's to try and find a method to connect it and was shown a USB thingi that has the appropriate female plug to insert the Iomega's plug and into the USB I plugged it... It won't recognize it!

I suppose there are parallel port cards... Are there? And will they work?
Should this USB one work too and I'm too dense to get it to work...?:hmm:

 

[billyb0b]

This should work for you

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815158005

 

[billyb0b]

Better yet this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815166005

Cheaper in price and there's a dude in the reviews saying it works with his zip drive.

 

[LunarRay]

Better yet this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815166005

Cheaper in price and there's a dude in the reviews saying it works with his zip drive.

Thanks!
I guess the USB thingi that the Fry guy gave me was not a workable solution... oh.. well.. hehehehe

 

[corkyg]

Those parallel-USB adapters are for printers. To use the ZIP drive you need to add a card that has a parallel port in the backplane. Unless you have a lot of valuable stuff on ZIP disks, it may not be worth the effort.

 

[Lemon law]

Those parallel-USB adapters are for printers. To use the ZIP drive you need to add a card that has a parallel port in the backplane. Unless you have a lot of valuable stuff on ZIP disks, it may not be worth the effort.

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Bingo, finally corkyg asks the right question. The zip disk was a wonderful technology and still is, but everything a zip drive did is now as well done by USB pen drives.

Which now allows us to focus on the real question our OP has to ask. Does he want to make his old zip drive work so he can read the possibly irreplaceable legacy information left on his 100 MB disks, or does he, like me, find zip technology still useful?

If its merely the former, simply find a friend with a computer with a parallel port, buy or borrow a cheap pen drive, and transfer the information to the flash drive.

Since many modern computers have only two expansions slots for cards like a parallel port card, it may be unwise to populate 50% of those slots with a card based solution if you still want to use a zip drive. But then, as a cheaper option, I would suggest a trip to a used computer shop or ebay, Where you can probably find a plethora of 100 MB
USB zip drives, selling for a $1.00 or so. Taking my own advice, I just checked ebay, and found 15 such offerings, with careful shopping and patience, you should be able to get a 100 MB usb zip drive for under $10.00 shipped and maybe get a few extra disks while you are at it. But avoid the larger 250 MB or 750 MB cousins if you want your old 100MB disks to fully function. The bigger drives will allow you to read old legacy 100 MB zip disks, but that is it. They will not allow you to write to the smaller disks, or format them.

 

[LunarRay]

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Bingo, finally corkyg asks the right question. The zip disk was a wonderful technology and still is, but everything a zip drive did is now as well done by USB pen drives.

Which now allows us to focus on the real question our OP has to ask. Does he want to make his old zip drive work so he can read the possibly irreplaceable legacy information left on his 100 MB disks, or does he, like me, find zip technology still useful?

If its merely the former, simply find a friend with a computer with a parallel port, buy or borrow a cheap pen drive, and transfer the information to the flash drive.

Since many modern computers have only two expansions slots for cards like a parallel port card, it may be unwise to populate 50% of those slots with a card based solution if you still want to use a zip drive. But then, as a cheaper option, I would suggest a trip to a used computer shop or ebay, Where you can probably find a plethora of 100 MB
USB zip drives, selling for a $1.00 or so. Taking my own advice, I just checked ebay, and found 15 such offerings, with careful shopping and patience, you should be able to get a 100 MB usb zip drive for under $10.00 shipped and maybe get a few extra disks while you are at it. But avoid the larger 250 MB or 750 MB cousins if you want your old 100MB disks to fully function. The bigger drives will allow you to read old legacy 100 MB zip disks, but that is it. They will not allow you to write to the smaller disks, or format them.

Thanks LL and Corkgy,

Yes, LemonLaw, I've some important stuff on those disc thingi. I had a desktop that had a parallel port until two years ago... these new fangled things don't have one... or at least mine don't. And yes, it only has two expansion slots and I do want to use it... I've like 150 of those discs with pictures and stuff like music and manuscript bits and pieces...
I like the idea of seeing if any of the computers I may have access to have the ports.. It will take some time but I've a couple 8gb usb thingi and can xfer the data... I'll wait till next upgrade to start using the zip drive. I like the zip drive even though it is mechanical.
I just looked at the face of my computer and it don't even have a bay to put a zip drive in or a floppy... heheheh that seems odd.. oh well...

Thanks folks for the input..
I'll get my data using another computer and next time I'll insure I can use my Zip Drive.

 

[Shawn]

They make 5.25 to 3.5" adaptors so that you can put a floppy or zip drive into a larger bay.

 

[Vincent]

Some motherboards have a header for a parallel port. For these you need a special cable and bracket on the back of your case.

 

[LunarRay]

Thanks for the help folks... I think after I get the data off the disc's I'll decide what to do next..

 

[Lemon law]

Thanks for the help folks... I think after I get the data off the disc's I'll decide what to do next..

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If you have 150 zip disks, you are talking a bunch of time to get all the information off the zip disks. If the information is not needed now now now, you might consider careful shopping on the used market and just get a USB type zip drive cheap.

As it is, I have one zip drive for my computer and one for my wife, and when I want to exchange files between computers, they are very handy for that. Sure I can burn them to a Cd-r, but when we are talking program files that go obsolete over time, the Cd-r is write once. The other problem is that information on a hard drive is volatile, if the HDD craps out, the information is often lost and unrecoverable, but it does not effect a zip drive at all. And because you have 15 GB of off line storage in those 150 zip disks, it hurts to simply throw them away.

And the other nice thing about a USB zip drive is no software to install, just hook it up to a windows computer, plug in the power supply, and you can take the drive to any windows computer.

 

[LunarRay]

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If you have 150 zip disks, you are talking a bunch of time to get all the information off the zip disks. If the information is not needed now now now, you might consider careful shopping on the used market and just get a USB type zip drive cheap.

As it is, I have one zip drive for my computer and one for my wife, and when I want to exchange files between computers, they are very handy for that. Sure I can burn them to a Cd-r, but when we are talking program files that go obsolete over time, the Cd-r is write once. The other problem is that information on a hard drive is volatile, if the HDD craps out, the information is often lost and unrecoverable, but it does not effect a zip drive at all. And because you have 15 GB of off line storage in those 150 zip disks, it hurts to simply throw them away.

And the other nice thing about a USB zip drive is no software to install, just hook it up to a windows computer, plug in the power supply, and you can take the drive to any windows computer.

Well.. I got some bad news after getting a pci parallel card [what I thought had a printer port did not - at work]
I tried to get my external 100mb iomega drive to load up and it wouldn't...
I then found on Iomega's site the comment that iomega does not support external 100mb parallel drives using XP.
But I did find an internal drive - same 100mb - that I had and forgot about... so I'll see if I can hook that up.