Zip drive - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable disk storage

Disk storage

Disk storage or disc storage is a general category of storage mechanisms, in which data are digitally recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical methods on a surface layer deposited of one or more planar, round and rotating disks...

system that was introduced by Iomega

Iomega

Iomega is an American producer of consumer external, portable and networking storage hardware. Established in the 1980s, Iomega has sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks. On April 8, 2008, EMC Corporation announced its plans to acquire Iomega for a consideration of US $213M...

in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB.

The format became the most popular of the super-floppy type products which filled a niche in the late 1990s portable storage market. However it was never popular enough to replace the 3.5-inch floppy disk

Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...

nor could ever match the storage size available on rewritable CDs

CD-RW

A CD-RW is a rewritable optical disc. It was introduced in 1997, and was known as "CD-Writable" during development. It was preceded by the CD-MO, which was never commercially released....

and later rewritable DVDs

DVD-RAM

DVD-RAM is a disc specification presented in 1996 by the DVD Forum, which specifies rewritable DVD-RAM media and the appropriate DVD writers. DVD-RAM media have been used in computers as well as camcorders and personal video recorders since 1998.-Design:DVD-RAM is one of three competing...

. USB flash drive

USB flash drive

A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...

s ultimately proved to be the better rewritable storage medium among the general public due to the near ubiquity of USB ports on personal computers and soon after because of the far greater storage sizes offered. Zip drives fell out of favor for mass portable storage during the early 2000s. The Zip brand later covered internal and external CD writers known as Zip-650 or Zip-CD, which had no relation to the Zip drive.

Overview

The Zip system is similar to Iomega's earlier Bernoulli Box

Bernoulli Box

The Bernoulli Box was a high-capacity removable disk storage system that was Iomega's first widely-known product...

system in that in both systems a set of read/write heads mounted on a linear actuator

Actuator

An actuator is a type of motor for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. It is operated by a source of energy, usually in the form of an electric current, hydraulic fluid pressure or pneumatic pressure, and converts that energy into some kind of motion. An actuator is the mechanism by which...

hovers over a rapidly spinning flexible medium mounted in a sturdy cartridge. However, the Zip cartridge lacks the Bernoulli plate of the earlier product and as a consequence the Zip cartridge has only one disk in the cartridge in contrast to the two disks in a Bernoulli cartridge (one on either side of the Bernoulli plate). In the Zip drive the heads fly in a manner similar to an HDD without the use of the Bernoulli effect. The linear actuator uses the voice coil

Voice coil

A voice coil is the coil of wire attached to the apex of a loudspeaker cone. It provides the motive force to the cone by the reaction of a magnetic field to the current passing through it...

actuation technology, related to modern hard drives. The Zip disk uses smaller media (about the size of a 9 cm (3½") microfloppy, but more ruggedised, rather than the Compact Disc

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

-sized Bernoulli media), and a simplified drive design that reduced its overall cost.

This resulted in a disk that has all of the 3½" floppy's convenience, but holds much more data, with performance that is much quicker than a standard floppy drive (though not directly competitive with hard drive

Hard disk

A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...

s). However, Zip disk housings are much thicker than those of floppy disks. The original Zip drive had a maximum data transfer rate of about 1 megabyte

Megabyte

The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...

/second (comparable to 6x CD-R; although some connection methods were slower, down to approx. 50 kB/second for maximum-compatibility parallel "nibble" mode) and a seek time of 28 millisecond

Millisecond

A millisecond is a thousandth of a second.10 milliseconds are called a centisecond....

s on average, compared to a standard 1.44 MB floppy's typical 500 kbit/s (62.5 kB

Kilobyte

The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...

/s) transfer rate and several-hundred millisecond average seek time. Typical desktop hard drives from mid-to-late 1990s revolved at 5400 rpm and had transfer rates from 3 MB/s to 10 MB/s or more, and average seek times from 20 ms to 14 ms or less.

Early generation Zip drives were in direct competition with the SuperDisk

SuperDisk

The SuperDisk, sometimes marketed as LS-120 and a later variant LS-240, is a high-speed, high-capacity alternative to the 90 mm , 1.44 MB floppy disk. The Superdisk hardware was introduced by 3M's storage products group circa 1997...

or LS-120 drives, which held 20% more data and could also read standard 3½" 1.44 MB diskettes, but they had a lower data transfer rate due to lower rotational speed. The rivalry was over before the dawn of the USB era.

Interfaces

Zip drives are available in multiple interfaces including

IDE True ATA (very early ATA internal Zip drives mostly sold to OEMs; these drives exhibit software compatibility issues because they do not support the ATAPI command set)
ATAPI (all Zip generations)
USB 1.1 (Zip 100 MB and 250 MB generations)
USB 2.0 (Zip 750 MB generation; backwards compatible with USB 1.1 systems)
IEEE 1284
IEEE 1284
IEEE 1284 is a standard that defines bi-directional parallel communications between computers and other devices.-History:In the 1970s, Centronics developed the now-familiar printer parallel port that soon became a de facto standard...

(Parallel Port
Parallel port
A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers for connecting various peripherals. In computing, a parallel port is a parallel communication physical interface. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port...

) with Printer passthrough (Zip 100 MB and 250 MB generations) ^{(See NB 1)}
IEEE 1394 (Firewire) (Zip 250 MB and 750 MB generations)
SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...

(Zip 100 MB and 250 MB generations; both internal and external editions; external editions limited to ID 5 and 6) ^{(See NB 2)}
"Plus" (Zip 100 MB external drive with both SCSI and IEEE 1284 connections; SCSI ID limited to ID 5 and 6) ^{(See NB 2)}

Parallel port external Zip drives are actually SCSI drives with an integrated Parallel-to-SCSI controller, meaning a true SCSI bus implementation but without the electrical buffering circuits necessary for connecting other external devices. Early Zip 100 drives used an AIC 7110 SCSI controller and later parallel drives (Zip Plus and Zip 250) used what was known as Iomega MatchMaker. The drives are identified by the operating system as "IMG VP0" and "IMG VP1" respectively.

Early external SCSI-based Zip drives often came with an included SCSI adapter known as Zip Zoom. The Zip Zoom is a rebadged ISA Adaptec SCSI host controller. Also, originally sold separately was a PCMCIA-to-SCSI adapter for laptop compatibility, also a rebadged Adaptec.

Interface availability:

Name	Interface
Name	ATAPI	SCSI SCSI Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...	LPT LPT LPT is the original, and still common, name of the parallel port interface on IBM PC-compatible computers. It was designed to operate a text printer that used IBM's 8-bit extended ASCII character set. The name derives from the fact that "line printer" was a common generic term at the time for any...	USB	FireWire
Zip 100
Zip 250
Zip 750

Driver support

Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

family
Some Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

/ BSD etc. (not universal)
Oracle Solaris 8,9,10,11
IBM OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
Macintosh System 6.x ^{(See NB 1)} 7.1-7.5 and Mac OS 7.6 to 9.2
Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

NB 1: Requires a driver older than 5.x.

BIOS support

Some modern BIOS

BIOS

In IBM PC compatible computers, the basic input/output system , also known as the System BIOS or ROM BIOS , is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface....

es still support booting to Zip Drives via the USB or ATAPI interfaces.

Compatibility

Higher capacity Zip disks must be used in a drive with at least the same capacity ability. Higher capacity drives can read lower capacity media. The 250 MB drive writes much more slowly to 100 MB disks than the 100 MB drive, and is unable to perform a "long" (thorough) format on a 100 MB disk. The 750 MB drive cannot write to 100 MB disks but can read existing disks, though they are the cheapest and most common of the three formats.

The retroreflective spot differs on the three media sizes such that if a larger disk is inserted in a smaller capacity drive, the disk is immediately ejected again without any attempt being made to access the disk.

Sales, problems, and licensing

Zip drives initially sold well after their introduction in 1994, owing to their low price and high (for the time) capacity. The drive was initially sold for just under $200 USD with one cartridge included, and additional 100 MB cartridges for $20. At this time hard disk

Hard disk

s typically had a capacity of 500 MB and cost around $200 USD, and so backing up with Zip disks was very economical for home users — some computer suppliers such as Dell

Dell

Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...

and Apple Inc. included Iomega internal Zip drives with their machines. Zip drives also made significant inroads in the graphic arts market, as a cheaper alternative to the Syquest cartridge hard drive system. The price of additional cartridges swiftly dropped further over the next few years, as more companies began supplying them. Eventually, the suppliers included Fujifilm

Fujifilm

is a multinational photography and imaging company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.Fujifilm's principal activities are the development, production, sale and servicing of color photographic film, digital cameras, photofinishing equipment, color paper, photofinishing chemicals, medical imaging...

, Verbatim

Verbatim Corporation

Verbatim Americas, LLC is a US company that markets storage media and flash memory products. It is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation of Japan and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.-History:...

, Toshiba

Toshiba

is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...

and Maxell

Maxell

, commonly known as Maxell, is a Japanese company which manufactures consumer electronics. The company's notable products are batteries -- the company's name is a contraction of "maximum capacity dry cell" -- and recording media, including audio cassettes and blank VHS tapes, and recordable optical...

. Epson and Nec

NEC

, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....

also produced a licensed 100 MB drive model with its brand name.

Sales of Zip drives and disks declined steadily from 1999 to 2003. Zip disks had a relatively high cost per megabyte compared to the falling costs of then-new CD-R

CD-R

A CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....

and CD-RW

CD-RW

A CD-RW is a rewritable optical disc. It was introduced in 1997, and was known as "CD-Writable" during development. It was preceded by the CD-MO, which was never commercially released....

disks.

The growth of hard drives to multi-gigabyte capacity made backing up with Zip disks less economical. Furthermore, the advent of inexpensive recordable CD and DVD drives for computers, as well as USB flash drive

USB flash drive

s, pushed the Zip drive out of the mainstream market. However, the advantages of magnetic media over optical media and flash memory, in terms of long-term file storage stability and high erase/rewrite cycles, still affords them a niche in the data storage arena. In such applications, Zip competes primarily with USB external hard drives and the Hi-MD version of Sony's MiniDisc

MiniDisc

The disc is permanently housed in a cartridge with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk. This shutter is opened automatically by a mechanism upon insertion. The audio discs can either be recordable or premastered. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to record...

, which stores up to 1 GB on a disk that is smaller and less expensive than a 100 MB Zip disk.

In September 1998, a class action

Class action

In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...

suit was brought against Iomega over a type of Zip disk failure dubbed the "Click of death

Click of death

Click of death is a term that became common in the late 1990s referring to the clicking sound in disk storage systems that signals the disk drive has failed, often catastrophically.- Origin of the term :...

".

In 2006, PC World

PC World (magazine)

PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...

rated the Zip drive as the 15th worst technology product of all time. However, in 2007, PC World rated the Zip drive as the 23rd best technology product of all time.

Legacy

Zip drives are still used today by retro computing enthusiasts as a means to transfer large amounts (compared to the retro hardware) of data between modern and older computer systems. The Commodore-Amiga

Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...

, Atari ST

Atari ST

The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...

, Apple II

Apple II

The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...

, and "old world"

Old World ROM

Old World ROM Macintosh computers are the Macintosh models that use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM chip, usually in a socket . All Macs prior to the iMac use Old World ROM, while the iMac and all subsequent models until the introduction of the Intel-based EFI Models are New World ROM machines...

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

communities often utilize drives with the SCSI interface prevalent on those platforms. They have also found a small niche in the music production community, as SCSI-compatible Zip drives can be used with vintage samplers and keyboards of the 90's.

ZipCD

Iomega also produced a line of internal and external recordable CD

CD-R

drives under the Zip brand in the late 1990s, called the ZipCD 650. It used regular CD-R media and had no format relation to the magnetic Zip drive. The external models were installed in a Zip drive-style case, and utilised standard USB 1.1 connections.

Iomega used the DirectCD software from Adaptec

Adaptec

Adaptec is a computer hardware brand owned by PMC-Sierra that is used on some of its host adapters for connecting storage devices to computers. The production line of Adaptec is in Indonesia. Products are made to interface with SCSI, Serial ATA, and Serial attached SCSI. Some of its host adapters...

to allow UDF

Universal Disk Format

Universal Disk Format is an implementation of the specification known as ISO/IEC 13346 and ECMA-167 and is an open vendor-neutral file system for computer data storage for a broad range of media. In practice, it has been most widely used for DVDs and newer optical disc formats, supplanting ISO 9660...

drive-letter access to CD-R or CD-RW media.

The company also released their own CD-R and CD-RW media under the same ZipCD name. However, the ZipCD drives would burn to any blank CD-R or CD-RW media.

Early models of ZipCD drives were rebadged Philips

Philips

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

drives, which were also so unreliable that a class action lawsuit succeeded.

The ZipCD 650 was able to record onto 700MB CDs but could only burn data up to 650MB. There was a 3rd party firmware that forced the ZipCD 650 to be able to write data CDs up to 700MB but made the drive unstable.

External links

Iomega Zip drive page

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