Looking for Reliable Zip Disks

Hello, all. I'm a newbie to this forum and the mpc (kind of). i've had it for years, but only recently started using a scsi drive with it, etc.

Yeah, I know I'm behind the times; I even still use my floppy. I just got my MPC upgraded last summer with more memory and formatted for the scsi drive. I have an iomega 250 drive that came with a triton rack i bought on ebay. it works fine, but i think one of my disks is corrupted. anyway, does anyone know about this specific brand of drive or are they all the same? where can I get some disks. I am aware of the cf mod, but i don't know when I might be doing that. for now, some disks or suggestions of other zip drives to get (if you think that is necessary) would be great. thanks in advance!

fooloof wrote:Hello, all. I'm a newbie to this forum and the mpc (kind of). i've had it for years, but only recently started using a scsi drive with it, etc.

Yeah, I know I'm behind the times; I even still use my floppy. I just got my MPC upgraded last summer with more memory and formatted for the scsi drive. I have an iomega 250 drive that came with a triton rack i bought on ebay. it works fine, but i think one of my disks is corrupted. anyway, does anyone know about this specific brand of drive or are they all the same? where can I get some disks. I am aware of the cf mod, but i don't know when I might be doing that. for now, some disks or suggestions of other zip drives to get (if you think that is necessary) would be great. thanks in advance!

You can get NOS (new old stock) Zip disks sometimes on Ebay pretty cheap and you can always find used disks there.
I think most Zip drives were made by the same company and then rebadged for sale by different computer manufacturers.There shouldn't be much(if any) difference between them.
You should maybe try and get a card reader instead of another Zip drive as they are faster, hold more data and are more reliable.
Check out http://www.scsiforsamplers.com

Acid Mitch wrote:

fooloof wrote:Hello, all. I'm a newbie to this forum and the mpc (kind of). i've had it for years, but only recently started using a scsi drive with it, etc.

Yeah, I know I'm behind the times; I even still use my floppy. I just got my MPC upgraded last summer with more memory and formatted for the scsi drive. I have an iomega 250 drive that came with a triton rack i bought on ebay. it works fine, but i think one of my disks is corrupted. anyway, does anyone know about this specific brand of drive or are they all the same? where can I get some disks. I am aware of the cf mod, but i don't know when I might be doing that. for now, some disks or suggestions of other zip drives to get (if you think that is necessary) would be great. thanks in advance!

You can get NOS (new old stock) Zip disks sometimes on Ebay pretty cheap and you can always find used disks there.
I think most Zip drives were made by the same company and then rebadged for sale by different computer manufacturers.There shouldn't be much(if any) difference between them.
You should maybe try and get a card reader instead of another Zip drive as they are faster, hold more data and are more reliable.
Check out http://www.scsiforsamplers.com

cool. thanks for the reply! will consider getting the card reader down the road, but looking for a short-term solution. your info was very helpful. thanks again.

zip is an admittedly terribly unreliable medium... iomega actually settled a class action lawsuit about this issue...

definitely better than floppies though...

the card reader is an eventual must for anyone taking their stuff serious...

fobedafied wrote:zip is an admittedly terribly unreliable medium... iomega actually settled a class action lawsuit about this issue...

definitely better than floppies though...

the card reader is an eventual must for anyone taking their stuff serious...

I thought the lawsuit was about how Iomega and it's tech support handled the click of death problem - not the problem itself

From what I've read , most problems from Zip disks and drives come when your moving them around all the time or exposing them to magnetic fields.


One thing to watch out for - My MPC60 won't recognise 100mb zip disks in a 250mb drive.
If you have a 250mb drive make sure your using 250mb disks.

Acid Mitch wrote:

fobedafied wrote:zip is an admittedly terribly unreliable medium... iomega actually settled a class action lawsuit about this issue...

definitely better than floppies though...

the card reader is an eventual must for anyone taking their stuff serious...

I thought the lawsuit was about how Iomega and it's tech support handled the click of death problem - not the problem itself

From what I've read , most problems from Zip disks and drives come when your moving them around all the time or exposing them to magnetic fields.
If anyone is concerned about there Zip stuff you can get a free program for Windows that will check your disks and drives. from here http://www.grc.com/tip/clickdeath.htm

One thing to watch out for - My MPC60 won't recognise 100mb zip disks in a 250mb drive.
If you have a 250mb drive make sure your using 250mb disks.

That utility sure looks interesting. However, I just tried it and it's not that convinient to use, since the author has made the software unusable past the date 2010-01-01 for some reason. I guess it won't run if you don't change the system date/time setting on your computer..

Edited: It works when setting back the system date one year.

fobedafied wrote:
the card reader is an eventual must for anyone taking their stuff serious...

Well.. I'd surely recommend flash cards over zip disks any day, but even more important than the choice of storage media is performing backups every now and then. It's perfectly possible to have a flash card break down, even though it's probably less likely than having a faulty zip drive corrupting a zip disc, or the opposite.. backup your stuff!

pUs wrote:
That utility sure looks interesting. However, I just tried it and it's not that convinient to use, since the author has made the software unusable past the date 2010-01-01 for some reason. I guess it won't run if you don't change the system date/time setting on your computer..

Edited: It works when setting back the system date one year.

Dam, I never knew that. Thaniks for pointing it out.
I used the app a while ago and don't remember mention of a time limit.
I'll edit the link out my original post.

Acid Mitch wrote:One thing to watch out for - My MPC60 won't recognise 100mb zip disks in a 250mb drive. If you have a 250mb drive make sure your using 250mb disks.

250mb drives can use 100mb disks but they have to be formated in 100mb drives first... thats what I do... then I partition 26 partitions of 4 megs each. I have never had an problems with zips... 100mb zip disk get filled up quick and I don't over use them. Plus I don't think it matters whether or not you turn the MPC on first or the zip first as the 250mb drives can turn on and off... I think the 100mb drives have to be turned on first and then the MPC. You have to deal with that annoying spinning noise.

Reliable and Zip shouldn't be in the same sentence though.