zip drives

I ordered the zip 750 to go with a new computer, that would no longer recognize my old, parallel port zip 100. Overall, i have been extremely pleased with the drive. The 750 mb disks are massive, compared to my old 100mb disks. With the firewire connection, it is as fast or faster than another zip i have with a atapi connection. There are only a few things that prevent this drive from recieving five stars. Fist, in order to connect it to a computer with a four-pin port, you need to call iomega and ask them to send you a power supply. Although they send the adapter quickly, and it is free, the additional step is a pain. Another problem i encountered is that the drive only comes with a six pin cord. If you want to attach the drive to a computer with a four pin port, be ready to shell out another thirty bucks for another cord. Although this should be no suprise, for some reason, the new drives can read but not write the old disks. It is evidently clear on the packaging that this is the case, but i still am frequently annoyed by that. My final complaint is that occasionally, on startup, windows XP does not immeadiatly recognize the drive. If you pull out the chord, wait a few seconds and then plug it back in, the drive is accesible. Agian, not a serious problem but an occasional hassle.Other than these minor problems, the zip 750 drive is an exceptional piece of equipment, and a true heir to this long line of sturdy, well designed storage devices.

A year ago, I would have cheerfully told you that there was no reason for anyone to waste money on a Zip drive. The largest capacity model then available was the 250, which was less than half of what a CD-RW could hold. CD burners were shipping pretty much as standard on all new computers. I grudgingly shelled out the money for a Zip drive on my new machine only because I needed some way of transferring data from the old one, which had a Zip 100 drive but no CD burner.

It didn't take me long to realize what a very wise investment I'd made. I prefer to synchronize my important documents and system settings using something like Windows Briefcase (barely useful) or Scooter Software's "Beyond Compare", which does a tremendous job of not only synchronizing files and entire directory trees, but scanning each file byte-by-byte for any signs of changes and/or corruption. It's very easy to update or repair any file the program flags.

What I discovered very quickly was that CD-RW drives were utterly worthless for this task. It didn't matter whether I used Roxio's "Direct CD", which came with the computer, or Nero's much-touted "InCD". The former constantly and reliably corrupted my data, while the latter just as reliably crashed my computer every time I tried it. Windows XP has built-in CD-writing software, but it is useless for the kind of file synchronization that I do.

"You can treat your CD just like a giant floppy!!!" Yeah, right! Nice try, guys!

Worse yet, as I troubleshooted Roxio's software, I discovered their nasty little secret. CDs created under Version 4 of "Direct CD" could not be read by Version 5, and people running Windows XP couldn't load Version 4 without crashing their computers. I wondered: What would happen when Version 6 came out?

So suddenly I found myself using that Zip 250 as my main means of file backup, along with a spare external hard drive. But, of course, 250 MB is not, by today's standards, a great deal of space. I needed three disks to do the job, and these were almost full. Plus, the Zip drive was painfully slow.

Thus, when Iomega announced their new Zip 750, I took immediate notice. I have actually worked with two of these devices. The one at work is a USB 2.0 model running on Windows 2000, while the one at home, running on Windows XP Home, is the nearly identical FireWire model featured on this page.

Setup of the FireWire device on Windows XP is very simple. You plug it into your FireWire port, wait for Windows Plug-and-Play to recognize it, then insert a Zip 750 disk and start working. Windows XP has built-in support for Zip drives, so you don't need to install anything from the included CD for basic file system operations. If, however, you want to write- or password-protect your Zip disk, you'll have to install Iomega Tools from the CD. They also offer a basic file backup utility. Since I haven't done anything with these, I can't comment on how well they work.

I started using the Zip 750 at home on December 10th of last year, and basically I've been very happy with it. While not as fast as a hard drive, it's certainly a major improvement over the Zip 250. I have yet to see one file be corrupted, and "Beyond Compare" has done literally dozens of very thorough scans on my backups. This is the very first time in my nearly 20 years of working with PCs that I can say with reasonable certainty that my backups are secure.

One performance bottleneck I've encountered is, according to Iomega's web site, due to the way Windows XP operates. Namely, copying (or comparing) large numbers of small files is drastically slower than copying small numbers of large files, even if the overall byte count is the same. So I use PKZip in a few places to create larger archives for faster copying.

The only reason I don't give this drive five stars is because of a dangerous design flaw. This is a very handsome-looking drive with a bright, shiny, metal plate on top. Unfortunately, said metal is an excellent conductor of static electricity. The very night I installed the drive on my home computer, I zapped it with my finger while attempting to insert a disk. This immediately knocked the drive off-line, and nothing but turning the computer off, then back on, would get Windows to recognize it again. My heart about stopped until I was satisfied that no permanent damage was done, either to the drive or to the computer.

Considering how light the drive is, there is no way to avoid touching it while doing an insert. Otherwise it simply slides backwards as you push.

The solution? Decidedly low-tech! I powered everything down, unplugged the drive, took that handy little anti-static bag the thing shipped in, wrapped it around the drive, and Scotch-taped it in place! Since then, I've had peace of mind and no problems at all!

The Zip 750 will reliably read and write the older Zip 250 disks (albeit more slowly), and will even read (but not write to) my ancient Zip 100 disks. Unlike some of those CD writing programs, Iomega takes backward compatibility seriously.

So, if you want speed and reliability, this drive is well worth the money.