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iomega zip drive=media compatibility?

chelseayr

Well-known member
was it each drive only to their own matching media or could you mix-down different media sizes? like a 100mb media in 750mb drive for example

 

CB_HK

Member
AFAIK, this is correct. There was built-in backward compatibility between Zip drives.

With that said, my only experience is a 250 reading a 100 cartridge.

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I think there were some limitations: something along the lines of 100s being read-only in the 750s, for example...but I have never seen a 750.

 

chelseayr

Well-known member
thanks especially when I had to recheck I won't have to keep both a 100mb and 250mb drive when the latter can handle both

 

NJRoadfan

Well-known member
Zip 750 drives and media were fairly uncommon as people moved to optical media storage by the time it came out. The Zip 250s were common due to OEM pre-installed drive deals, but the media certainly wasn't. The Zip 250 drive should read and write 100 disks.

 

chelseayr

Well-known member
yeah, I had thought that the 750mb was a bit of an oddity, nevermind that one of the office supplier chain (staples if anyone in canada knew that name) was still trying to sell 100/250mb medias for more than $50cad each long after 256mb usb thumbdrives for less than $30 had been showing up everywhere

 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
Zip100 drives can, of course, only r/w zip100 media.

Zip250 drives can read/write 100 and 250 media

Zip750 drives:

- r/w 750 media

- r/w 250 media

- READ ONLY 100 media

I believe in each case, backwardly compatible media operates at lower performance than the original media, so my recommendation is to pick a system and use the same drives and disks across the board, if you can.

 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
In terms of using Zip at all: Just be ware, lots of problems, mostly with 100, so if you can get all 250 you'll have slightly better luck than using any 100 stuff. Networking would be better, MO would be better, CD-R/RWs or DVDram would be better, etc etc.

In terms of "the context of zip750 in 2002: Flash drives weren't quite commonly available yet in early 2002,

CD-R was available and was growing cheaper, but I'll be honest, burning CDs isn't convenient and so I bet Iomega had this idea that the market for a more convenient superfloppy still existed, even if that market was "a drive and a handful of disks" which is a revised goal from the Zip100 scenario where Iomega was dumping the drives.

I still hate burning optical media for one-offs, unless I'm going to give someone a disc, and even today, 32gb flash disks have come down.

Removable media would likely have continued being popular if USB disks hadn't become a thing. Although, I'll openly admit that my preferred alternate reality here is that hiMD becomes the defacto superfloppy format, in lieu of Zip, but 3.5-inch MO would also have been good, just, hiMD is multi-purpose in that sense and holds a gig and that's "fine" for most people's superfloppy needs. (relative to 1.3/2.3 gigabyte media.)

 

chelseayr

Well-known member
thanks for the interesting post cory

and I'll admit that I have no make-once media here, first cd burner drive I ever bought I added a single fujitsu cdrw disc to the receipt to go with it

as for what you suggested, not surprisingly I had been thinking a bit about magneto as a non-network alternative option to iomega too since I can find relatively inexpensive 3.5" drives for both scsi and newer systems altogether

 
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