[bowwowman]

I'm just curious to see what member's opinions are as to the relative value of Zip drives when considering a purchase of a used Mac G3/4 tower. Please vote honestly

thanks !

[zerostar]

crap, even when they worked they were slow, but mostly they click click clicked.

[ajprice]

A few years ago they were useful. Today, they are not worth anything. For the sake of a disk that holds 100 or 250Mb, burn a CD. You can buy 100 CD-R's for less than £10, or 15 DVD-R's for less than a fiver, how much is 65-70Gb storage of zip disks going to cost? (I'd guess it was approaching 4 figures in £ )

Hehe, I just went to try and find the price of the disks now, and came across 750Mb disks. I didn't even know 750Mb zip disks existed! goes to show how much a zip disk or drive means nowadays.

Edit: and thats saying nothing about what zerostar mentions above, click of death, failing disks...

[Sherman Homan]

I have one word for Zip drives:

"whirrrr....click....clunk....whirrrr....click.... clunk.......whirrrr....click....clunk...."

[bballe336]

I have used the zip drive in my G3 maybe twice. I wish Apple had put in a second optical drive bay instead of the crappy zip drive.

[shifuimam]

Internal Zip drives are notorious for crapping out after only a few years of regular use, to the point that they corrupt any Zip disks you try to use in them.

Don't use it. Perhaps you can install a second optical drive instead? Or maybe a 3.5" floppy/Ziip-sized memory card reader that can do all the standard memory card types.

[ajprice]

A G3/G4 tower design is a doddle to replace the CD drive with, so if the computer you get does not have a Superdrive (DVD-R), you can fit one yourself in place of the fitted drive.

[bowwowman]

Originally Posted by ajprice 

A G3/G4 tower design is a doddle to replace the CD drive with, so if the computer you get does not have a Superdrive (DVD-R), you can fit one yourself in place of the fitted drive.

True (been there, done that, many many times), but this has nothing to do with a zip drive, which is only a 3.5" drive and fits in the smaller bay below the optical drive......

And FWIW, I am NOT buying a mac, but am involved in a discussion in the marketplace forum about how much a Zip drive would add to the resell value of a used MDD thats up for sale

[imitchellg5]

I have never used my Zip Drive. Actually it came from the factory unplugged and I didn't even notice until the other day.

[Cadaver]

Completely useless today and worth almost nothing in terms of resale value.
They were useful before the days of CD-RWs being everywhere.

[©öñFü$íóÑ]

My external Zip 100 SCSI still works perfectly. And I use it regularly on my old PowerMac 6100 for when I'm working in Photoshop. I have a mediocre 4.5 GB hard drive, so the Zip drive is the only option I have for scratch space.

I remember when I first bought this thing in the mid-90's....... man, 100 MB was hopelessly hard to fill up when all I was working on were high-school presentations and downloading mp3s at 33.6kbps.

But for my modern storage needs on my more-modern computer at home or at the university, I just rely on 1GB or 2GB or flash drives.

[SpaceMonkey]

Considering you could install a Superdrive for less than 50 bucks, a zip drive would be totally superfluous, and not add anything to the value of the used Mac.

For the truly cheap, I've seen people giving away old CD-RW drives for free on Craigslist.

[P]

1999 called, they want their thread title back.

Seriously, what do you want to use it for? Too small and unreliable for backups, not common enough to be trusted as a transfer solution and HDs are big enough that the extra storage they provide is not useful.

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by P 

… not common enough …

hence I still like them, who is gonna be able or even care to mess with my filemaker pro files which are archived on those weird floppies dubbed zip 'after the zip format file' ?

[chris v]

I don't think I've used mine in at least 2 years. Back before we had a fast, reliable internet connection, I would actually ferry jobs to my service bureau via Zip disk. Now, 90% of all customer files come & go via email or FTP, and the other 10% on CD. If I need to take a file home, I copy it to my Powerbook or my iPod, and all my off-site backups are on DVD.

I had about 60 zip disks, and I got smart and sold them on eBay back before everyone had figured out that they were totally worthless. I think I got about $75.00 for them.

[ChrisB]

It's true, after a year it was the "click of death" for the drive and the disk. But it is nice to have if you have the drives at work and you need to take a large file with you.

Otherwise, who cares.

[bowwowman]

Originally Posted by chris v 

I had about 60 zip disks, and I got smart and sold them on eBay back before everyone had figured out that they were totally worthless. I think I got about $75.00 for them.

same here........the guy who bought them said he had over 300, and needed more, and was really thankful to find a bulk lot for a reasonable price. Back then, new 100mb disks were selling for over $8 each, and IIRC, he paid me ~$250 for my box of 50.....

[SSharon]

I guess I am lucky that I have never had a zip disk die on me. I voted that they are useful but only because I have a few computers that use them. My 7100/66 has an external SCSI and it was crucial in upgrading to the beige G3 which had floppy/cd/zip builtin (we got an external cdrw later). When I started college and I got my MDD I got a usb zip drive for compatibility with the other two computers and more recently when I got a blue and white G3 I was happy it had the drive.

[cgc]

I have one and it was very useful until USB Thumbdrives came out...never had a problem with my 250MB Zip drive.