what do people use 250mb zip drives for?

[daveymark]

I'm still seeing these on the shelves in stores. what are people buying them for?

 

[jjj807]

well at the time zips came out an average HD was about half a gig. So people still have old pc's and are probably loyal ZIP customers up until the past few years. Some people never upgrade. Also unlike cd's and flash memory, magnetic media has a higher rating of long-term file storage stability. And can be reused unlimited amounts of times. That's just my guess.

 

[jadinolf]

I have 4 computers and 4 Zip drives attached.

I save downloaded programs and graphic files on Zip disks.

Been using them since December of 1996 and have no complaints,

 

[Zepper]

The Zip drives themselves have never had a good rep for reliability and they take the disks with them when they go. So I wouldn't have one here.

.bh.

 

[Burpy]

I have a iomega 250 (takes 250MB & 100MB disks) USB powered zip drive with 19 100MB disks sitting in the closet. I used it to back-up important data, programs and some media.

I might end up selling it as it's not getting used as much anymore. If anyone is interested, just shoot me a PM.

 

[Rottie]

Same here except it is parallel port external Zip 250 drive I have is in the closet collecting dust I was not sure if it is worth selling it because nobody is going to buy Zip drive anymore.

 

[eplebnista]

A relative of mine was using one to back up financial data because they could not get the hang of burning CD's (which I did for them when all of their zip disks were full, so they could reuse them). The software they use changed their backup scheme which caused the backups to balloon to ~50-60mb each, instead of the ~15-20mb it had been in previous versions, which caused them to run through disks a lot quicker. As a result, I finally got them to buy a DVD burner with DVD-ram capability and since then they have been backing up to a DVD-ram disk.

 

[jadinolf]

Oh, forgot to mention that I back up Quicken files to Zip disks-- one for odd days and one for even days.

Oh yes, I know how to back up to a CD. Been messin' with computers since 1975.

 

[shortylickens]

ZIP disks used to be really cool. The capacity, speed, and ease of use made them superior to 1.44 MB floppies and a pretty good alternative to CDRW's in many situations. But Iomega wouldnt release the ZIP drive to the general public like what happened with floppy drives and CD burners. It couldnt grow in the market and collapsed on itself. They should have been the standard replacement to floppy drives a LONG time ago. It wasnt until many years after their introduction Iomega let other companies make the disks (Fuji and Maxell and 3M).

Now that we have large and cheap USB flash drives (which most motherboards allow you to boot from) ZIP disks really have no place in the new world of computing. There are no advantages save legacy and floppies were always more popular so thats not a good point either.

As for the original question: As has already been pointed out they were superior to floppies and many big companies used them. Often they would equip them on all their computers and buy disks a thousand at a time.
The drives and disks eventually went up to 750 megs and some folks found them useful. Many of the 100 and 250 meg drives are still floating around and certain people like to keep using them.

I liked having a ZIP on my laptop way back in '99. But today USB thumb drives are much bigger and faster and certainly easier to use. Every computer has a USB port. Few have ZIP drives. Sharing files with any friend or coworker makes them more practical.

 

[potato28]

Never used those ZIP drives. I had one screw up and take a major school project down the drain, screwing me up for that night. Used CD's and USB flash drives ever since.

 

[bigboxes]

CDs came way down in price. Zip discs were major $$ in comparison. I have an internal zip drive somewhere in a box. Time marches on.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
ZIP disks used to be really cool. The capacity, speed, and ease of use made them superior to 1.44 MB floppies and a pretty good alternative to CDRW's in many situations. But Iomega wouldnt release the ZIP drive to the general public like what happened with floppy drives and CD burners. It couldnt grow in the market and collapsed on itself. They should have been the standard replacement to floppy drives a LONG time ago. It wasnt until many years after their introduction Iomega let other companies make the disks (Fuji and Maxell and 3M).

Now that we have large and cheap USB flash drives (which most motherboards allow you to boot from) ZIP disks really have no place in the new world of computing. There are no advantages save legacy and floppies were always more popular so thats not a good point either.

As for the original question: As has already been pointed out they were superior to floppies and many big companies used them. Often they would equip them on all their computers and buy disks a thousand at a time.
The drives and disks eventually went up to 750 megs and some folks found them useful. Many of the 100 and 250 meg drives are still floating around and certain people like to keep using them.

I liked having a ZIP on my laptop way back in '99. But today USB thumb drives are much bigger and faster and certainly easier to use. Every computer has a USB port. Few have ZIP drives. Sharing files with any friend or coworker makes them more practical.

I completely agree. Iomega royally screwed up with the zip disk, they really could have had something. Heck, it hasn't been until recently that the floppy has finally all but gone away.

If Iomega would have positioned the zip disk as a complete replacement for the floppy I believe we'd still be seeing most computers come with a standard zip drive much like they used to have a floppy.

In high school all the computers in my school had a zip drive and it was so very useful seeing as how USB media wasn't widely available just yet (and if it was it was very expensive), CD burners were only just coming out (and thus very expensive) and high speed internet was only in its infancy.

I think the only reason floppy survived as long as it did was because it was so widely implemented into the market. Of course the measly capacity would eventually bring it down, and that is my point - a floppy (zip) even with a meager 100MB capacity could still see a fairly good deal of use to this day, the only thing holding that back is the fact that the drives simply aren't universally implemented like floppy drives once were.