Urgent! Need help with a freaky problem!! ZIP's.............

Hi all! I'm havin' a major problem! Please help!?!
I have a few MPC's but for gigs use a 2000xl. I load off an internal ZIP drive. I use ver.1.14! I need 2 MPC's to perform live as tracks dont load fast enough. HOWEVER, my ZIPs dont read in other drives. I've tried to load my stuff on 2 other 2000XLs and they have the same OS but dont read my disks at all! They wont even read from an external ZIP hooked up to my MPC!
I need another solution rather than re-writin' 5 of my tunes in a 2000. Would an external CD-Rom load faster than an external zip? Is this somethin' to think about or do you guys know what the problem is?? I'm goin' nuts over it. I play in soooo many places and have crazy problems with condensation too but that's another story. HELP?! pls

The original mpc you wrote the tracks on is a 2kxl as well ?

The "original" MPC in question would be mine. It's the only one i've ever used. Went to a friends before and looked for differences. The only one I found was on the disk format page. Underneath "partition" where it says version - mine says 14a and his says 03.h. Can anyone help?

You're right thats pretty freaky.

Yeah and my only other option if I can't get another 2000xl to read my disks is to completely re-write 4 tunes in a 2000 which'll be a pain cuz I dont know the OS and I have about 5 days to do it! Admin? Any of you guys have any ideas pls? I thought to format a disk in his machine and save my files onto that but my machine did'nt even read that it had been formatted. I'm gutted over this as it hardly seems possible. I tried 3 disks in all; loadin' them into his machine and it read 2 of the disks but converted all the file names to complete jibberish! On the flipside, his disks did'nt read in my machine either.......

Sounds like you have a corrupted zip drive that is somehow stil functional within the OS of your MPC!!!

Not saying that's what it is, I'm not even suggesting if that is even possible, 'cause I don't know, but that's what it sounds like happened.

So the tunes were written and saved on a zipdrive on a mpc2k xl and you want to read those disks on a zipdrive connected to a mpc2000 classic ?

Yes, the 2000 is another option for me, however his machine did'nt read my disks either. I use my MPC's very hands on so it aint just "press play" and leave it. So obviously I dont wanna bring a c-dj into the picture but I might have no choice for bout 3 tunes of the set.
If you have any ideas to help with compatibility tho i'd be very grateful. Thanks anyway for some quick responses guys; this forums cool and i'll be stayin'. I definately think my zip drive might be corrupted in some way but it's odd to think that it's corrupted to work/read my files and other zips dont.

Well it is for example known with DAT machines that if they're not serviced regularly to produce problems similar to your zuip problem t.t.s. The DAT that recorded the tape can play it's own recordings but the tapes won't run on another DAT machine. It might be that your zip drive has a similar problem.

Yeah, that does sound logical. I guess that means I dont really have a possible solution. Thanks for the advice.