whats the official word on zip discs vs windows xp/2000?

im in the market for a new computer. mos definately going to get a zip drive in that mutha. i need to know for sure which operating system to use so that windows doesnt corrupt my mpc written data. i've searched the forums but i get conflicting answers.

so which way is the way to go? can i get xp or should i stick with 2000?

& it's true that i need to format the zips in windows, right?

I have XP and if I format the disk in XP it plays fine in my MPC2000XL.

XP will not read MPC formated disks if you have formated your C drive to NTFS - format it to FAT32 and it will read them fine. So in this case, it never matters what format the MPC disk is in (in my experience that is)

"XP will not read MPC formated disks if you have formated your C drive to NTFS "

I use NTFS and I can format Zips that the MPC can read using Iomega's Zp tools. No reason to reformat your machine.

I have a SCSI zip attached to my windows XP machine and if you format a Disk on it my 2KXL will not read them!!!!!! also 2kxl formatted zips will not be read by xp....

I would be carefull as this seems to have been reported by many...allthough not those above...Use the Iomage Ware sounds like good advice....

I simply took all my ZIPS and my ZIP DRIVE to a Windows98 machine and formatted them all....There are always work arounds...!!!!

mpc3000 wrote:"XP will not read MPC formated disks if you have formated your C drive to NTFS "

I use NTFS and I can format Zips that the MPC can read using Iomega's Zp tools. No reason to reformat your machine.

I never said you can't format zip disks using XP with NTFS. In fact I said the following

I have XP and if I format the disk in XP it plays fine in my MPC2000XL.

I said that XP cannot recognise MPC format disks if the computer OS is formatted to NTFS.

True. The mpc will read disk formatted with an OS on any ntfs partition, but xp won't read mpc formatted disks if you've installed it on an ntfs partition.

To give you a specific advice, i would choose xp over win2000. It has many handy features you might need one day, and a lot of audio-software runs better on an xp machine.

You can go with NTFS as well, all you really have to remember is to NEVER format a disk with your mpc.
If you already have a lot of zips formatted on the mpc you can install xp on a fat32 partition. You can choose either one when you do a clean install.

You format a disk with the MPC can that disk be reformatted? To another file system? Like FAT??

Yes, just place it in the zip drive, right click the drive icon in Windows and hit FORMAT.

I was all pissed at first because I thought my Windows XP Zip (serial) would not communicate with my MPC SCSI Zip, but after I formatterd the disc on the PC using the FAT instead of NTFS or FAT32 it worked cool. I am really happy now.

thanks guys