| For many years the floppy disk dominated the data | | | | faced an uphill struggle from it's introduction to an |
| backup market for the home user as they offered | | | | eager computer market. |
| affordable data storage. Using floppies were | | | | The Zip drive was/is available in a few different |
| awkward, slow and highly unreliable but at the time it | | | | flavors. There were parallel, SCSI, USB and IDE Zip |
| was all we had. Then along came the Zip drive and | | | | drives available on the market at one stage. This |
| the world of data backup changed overnight thanks | | | | meant that regardless of what type of computer |
| to the creator of the Zip drive - Iomega. No longer | | | | you had you'd be able to find a Zip drive with a |
| were you restricted to a paltry 1.4MB of disk storage | | | | compatible interface. This meant that both Mac and |
| - now you could fit 100MB on one single Zip disk. | | | | PC users tended to love the Zip drive although most |
| Later this increased to, a then, massive 750MB of | | | | Mac users tended to favor the Zips bigger SCSI |
| storage space which was completely unheard of at | | | | brother - the Jaz drive... that however is the topic for |
| the time. | | | | another article for another day. |
| Zip drives worked in almost exactly the same way | | | | Alas for all their ingenuity the Zip drive has become all |
| as a floppy disk except they were physically bigger | | | | but obsolete. The current growth in hard drive |
| and provided a much higher data transfer rate than | | | | storage capacities has meant that any storage |
| home users had ever seen before in an "external" | | | | device offering less than 10GB - 20GB of storage |
| data storage device. The biggest problem with Zip | | | | space is all but ignored as a useful backup device. |
| drives is that although they were similar to floppy | | | | Any computer user reading this who has ever owned |
| disks you still needed a separate Zip drive to read or | | | | a Zip drive will probably feel the same sense of |
| write to these disks which in turn meant more | | | | nostalgia I felt when writing it. The Zip drive was |
| expense for home users. Also there was a rival | | | | incredibly revolutionary in it's day and paved the way |
| technology called the LS-120 or SuperDisk that found | | | | for a real boom in data backup technology for homes |
| favour with many computer manufacturers (ironically | | | | and small businesses. RIP Zip drive.... you shall be |
| enough the Zip drive long outlived the LS-120 in | | | | missed. |
| terms of popularity and usefulness) so the Zip drive | | | | |