I got ZipDisks!

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 2:12 am Post subject: I got ZipDisks!

I just acquired two 250MB drives and dozens of (so far) working disks! 100MB and 250MB capacities. I am zeroing the disks one at a time for reliability testing. When done, I'll recreate the infamous partition number 4 and then I get to format it. I was thinking of BTRFS for protection as the magnetic disk surface ages and fails. What have you guys done? Maybe SquashFS or something to cram a lot onto one? Just playing here, but I loved these things back in the day and it's fun to use them again.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

I'm surprised that dozens of working disks actually exited the factory. I bought one of these just before the court ordered them to cease production until their customer support was working right, and if I remember correctly that's the last we ever heard from them.

I wound up using my drive as target practice.

bobbymcgee · n00b Joined: 12 Apr 2018 Posts: 55

I was so sick of 3.5s with bad sectors by that point I, never had the pleasure. now I think at 252 kB/s, I would end up breaking it by tossing it across the room.

Goverp · Advocate Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 2006

At least you can still use them if you can find a good disk. I've a couple of 8" floppys, a stack of punched cards, and some paper tape in the attic. The last two have no read errors (unless vermin have been eating them).

As for filesystems for potentially unreliable hardware, avoid encryption and compression like the plague. A one bit error can render the rest of the disk unreadable. Redundancy is your friend.
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fturco · Veteran Joined: 08 Dec 2010 Posts: 1181 Location: Italy

I would use badblocks instead of dd for checking disk corruption.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

I don't know if any official study was ever done, but I suspect that in a comparison of data storage over time, modified by quality expectations at the time of use, that zip disks might be the worst data storage medium ever produced.

Our requirements and expectations for data integrity and system reliability have increased over time, but even with the loose expectations of quality from the floppy disk era, I can think of no storage media or drives which inspired more rage in users.

Couple this with two support lines that each told you to call the other one, and a company intent on selling as many drives and disks as possible with full knowledge that many of them would not work, and no intention of ever fixing them.

I'm surprised that every last member of the board of directors didn't do prison time. A board of directors exists specifically to prevent this type of thing.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 3:08 pm Post subject:

Odd, I never had a zip disk fail. I have a few of the very first models from way back in the early 90's and they still read and write. I had pictures on them. They are now on a BTRFS RAID NAS I made, but still, they lasted 20+ years on one. Maybe if you use them a lot they die?
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1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

That, and the fact that there was a court order, and the wording of the order proves that my experience was not a rare event.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 3:52 pm Post subject:

I have mostly 100MB and 250MB disks. I know they made 750MB disks. Was it those which were so awful?
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1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

I believe I had 250mb drives. I also believe that pretty much everything called a 'zip disk' was under the court order.

What's crazy is that before that iomega was pretty reliable from what I could find. They got on this product and threw it all out just to get as many sales as possible.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Personally what I believe happened is that iomega came up with a pretty good product that was a reasonable extension of their previous bernoulli technology.

The product got into the eyes of the home users as a cheap storage medium and thought of them as a next generation floppy disk.

The public demand was, I think, much higher than iomega could deliver. I believe their attempts to ramp up production were too little, too late. I believe they sacrificed quality control in favor of satisfying all orders. In the end they produced junk, this much I'm sure. But the original product may have been good equipment. It doesn't make sense that, if the early drives were poor quality, that they would have gained steam the way they did. So the early ones must have been acceptable quality.

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

I know my zip drive and disks worked fairly well (I got the drive used from a university). I never knew about the issues around them or the court order; the most I saw on them was that when I got it; they were not too popular anymore. The issues with them, may be why I got the drive for free; as even the university was getting rid of using them.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 1:11 am Post subject:

All of mine still work, even the internal combo units which did zip and floppy. Speaking of floppy, I have about 300 5.25" disks for Atari 400/800/1000 and they appear to work. My Atari systems DO work. I am surprised zip disks had trouble. I never ran into it for whatever reason.
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1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

If you used computers when zip disks were in widespread use you could hardly have remained ignorant of the problems. It was on mainstream news a lot.

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 2:02 pm Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 6:06 pm Post subject:

I live in the USA, in North Carolina on the east coast. Never had issues. I am at my father's house now for Father's Day. I broke out the drive to show him since he used to do backups on them weekly. He dug out his old 100MB disks (he has no drive) and we're checking them now. No errors and all kinds of old Windows 9X backups on them! The one I checked first had an Outlook PST file on it. We're zeroing that disk now. Badblocks gave it a good bill of health.
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1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/571835/Iomega-faces-suit-over-rebates-for-its-Zip-drives.html

I believe that there was more than one court action. Google "iomega click of death lawsuit" for more info.

I believe that there was an action about their complete lack of customer support, and one about rebates and another about continuing sales of a product with a very high early failure rate.

I'm on my phone so searching google output is difficult.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2018 12:55 am Post subject:

All drives get a click of death at some point. WD Caviars used to be (and many still are) HORRIBLE for failing quickly. Also, that link is about a failed rebate program.
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bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5934

I had two zip drives back in the day, they both died from that "click of death", although its more like "sticktion"... the heads get clamped to the soft plastic medium, get ripped off the head arms, and ruin both the drive and the disk.
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eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2018 2:55 am Post subject:

Hmm... I have two 100M and a 250M drive, and only 100MB media. I get around 1MB/sec through them (ATAPI-USB) - I recall being able dd an image in around 100 seconds.

These all were acquired second hand unknown condition mostly, though I did end up with 4 shrink wrapped 100M disks. I never had them in the heyday so I don't know for sure, but as of current, they seem semi-reliable. I do wonder how tolerant these things really of abuse; just like the bernoulli, I think 1.44M floppy disks are more resistant to abuse.

The jaz is something else, if only its media were cheaper...
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1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:16 pm Post subject:

I used badblocks on all six of the new disks and not a single error. I am now going through a trove of disks given to me. I have probably fifty of them, a good mix of 100MB and 250MB disks. So my collection has grown to probably sixty or so disks, two USB 250MB drives, and two or three internal drives, one being a combo drive that does floppies and ZipDisks. I know they'll fail one day, but I hold out hope. Hell, my Atari disks (5.25") from the late 70's still work and I can load and play games on them to this day. Maybe these will be as good!
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johngalt · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:06 pm Post subject:

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2021 4:12 pm Post subject:

I finally got around to resurrecting my Iomega Zip 100 parallel-port drive last week. Quite chuffed that it is still working after circa 19 years sitting on a shelf unused. None of my machines has a parallel port so I had a look on eBay and found a legacy desktop machine with a parallel port for a very cheap price. Had fun getting it work, and have blogged about it and added a few photos:

https://fitzcarraldoblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/19/resurrecting-my-iomega-zip-100-parallel-port-drive-linux-comes-to-the-rescue/
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