[SirCastor]

We all hate it. The ignorant pop up to ask a question about their MAC.
Well here it is, perpetuated on an honest-to-goodness product.

[Kerrigan]

Do they still sell those things?

[voodoo]

I still have a SCSI Zip drive in a drawer somewhere. It was useful for a while.

[Railroader]

Good find. Now you need to figure out the i-pod thing.

[voodoo]

Not to mention the Ipod and Imac thing.

[turtle777]

-t

[Uncle Doof]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Do they still sell those things?

Yup. Very useful for PC accounts nightly backups.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Not to mention the Ipod and Imac thing.

I'm willing to bet Ipod and Imac are the result of Microsoft Word auto-correcting.

"You're a moron. You obviously meant to capitalize the I and not the letter next to it."

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

I'm willing to bet Ipod and Imac are the result of Microsoft Word auto-correcting.

"You're a moron. You obviously meant to capitalize the I and not the letter next to it."

Yep, I concur. I lay the blame squarely on Word. I've had Word 'auto-correct' me that way many a time. Grr.

[scaught]

Originally Posted by Uncle Doof 

Yup. Very useful for PC accounts nightly backups.

Seriously? I wouldn't backup ANYTHING on one of those. Their track record defeats the entire purpose of backup. (your mileage may have varied)

[Uncle Doof]

Originally Posted by scaught 

Seriously? I wouldn't backup ANYTHING on one of those. Their track record defeats the entire purpose of backup. (your mileage may have varied)

I can't recall ever having had a problem with them.

[Chuckit]

Have you actually used them more than twice? I used to use them all the time back in the '90s, and I learned early that redundant backups are not only a good idea, they were pretty much necessary.

[ghporter]

The drives had a number of problems for a time, and I wound up getting something like five of them replaced at no charge. A few of them I'd bought at computer shows and "surprise!" they worked for like two minutes then died with the "click of death." In '99 and 2000 they were handy but already being replaced by CD burners.

Someday I'll get around to transferring my files on Zip discs to CDs. I do have all the hardware to do that (and it all works too!).

[(s)macintosh]

*click* *click*

*click* *click* *click* *click*

*click*

[sek929]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Have you actually used them more than twice? I used to use them all the time back in the '90s, and I learned early that redundant backups are not only a good idea, they were pretty much necessary.

I agree. I think I had 2 out of a 6 pack that didn't fail and erase all the data eventually. I still have the translucent blue USB drive kicking around somewhere.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

Your a moran.

You weren't doing it right.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

The drives had a number of problems for a time, and I wound up getting something like five of them replaced at no charge. A few of them I'd bought at computer shows and "surprise!" they worked for like two minutes then died with the "click of death." In '99 and 2000 they were handy but already being replaced by CD burners.

Someday I'll get around to transferring my files on Zip discs to CDs. I do have all the hardware to do that (and it all works too!).

Yeah, the disks themselves seemed okay, it was always the drives that keeled over. I still have one tower with a Zip 250 in it, but I couldn't tell you if it worked, as it's been 2 years since I've given it a try.

I had clients bringing me floppies for longer than Zips, once CD's hit. Zip disks were just waaaaay too expensive.

[olePigeon]

Imation had the perfect transitional product. The Super Drive with the 120MB "floppy" disk. It also read normal floppies. Too bad they didn't market it very well. Iomega just took ahold of the market and kept it.

Anyone remember the 10MB floppy? At one of the places I volunteered at, we had a PowerMac 8100 that had some special floppy drive that used 10MB floppy disks. It also read normal floppies, but blazingly fast compared to your average floppy drive. We used it to copy Adobe Premiere project files cuz sneakernet was faster than AppleTalk.

[Face Ache]

Originally Posted by (s)macintosh 

*click* *click*

*click* *click* *click* *click*

*click*

Just last week I threw out an old Jaz drive that could do that.

[Uncle Doof]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Have you actually used them more than twice?

Yup. Had 30-odd disks in rotation for about four years now. No problems.

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

I used to use them all the time back in the '90s, and I learned early that redundant backups are not only a good idea, they were pretty much necessary.

Of course. Who the heck doesn't do redundant backups anyways?

[Nivag]

In the draw next to me


There is a cupboard in another office full of these and the added bonus of Jaz and Syquest carts - happy days!

[analogika]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

We all hate it. The ignorant pop up to ask a question about their MAC.
Well here it is, perpetuated on an honest-to-goodness product.

"MAC Formatted", eh?

Well, I suppose that means it's networkable.

Sneaker-net compatible.

FWIW - I have two ZIPs sitting here that I just needed for a job last week: A lot of Kurzweil K2000 samplers out there (a defacto standard), with their sample libraries on ZIP disks.

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Yep, I concur. I lay the blame squarely on Word. I've had Word 'auto-correct' me that way many a time. Grr.

Sometimes iTunes will do that to you as well: if you have previously entered an album incorrectly, with a lowercase first letter, autofill won't let you write it in correctly. You have to complete the word, then cursor back to change the first letter to a capital.

Sounds like nothing, but it can be very irritating.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by Face Ache 

Just last week I threw out an old Jaz drive that could do that.

My uncle was getting rid of some old junk and he asked me if I wanted a Jaz drive and a few 2GB disks, it was SCSI so I had no way of using it.

[Sourbook]

I'm still waiting for my $50 rebate from Iomega. It should be here any day now.

[ort888]

I used to have about 100 zip disks. I worked at Kinko's in Zip's heyday, and we would get about 2 a day in our lost and found bin. After a month, they were mine. I used to give them to all of my friends.

Zips were relevant for what? About 3 years?

[Uncle Doof]

Originally Posted by ort888 

Zips were relevant for what? About 3 years?

I'd argue that they're still relevant. What other small, easy, cheap, offsite backup solution is there for an accounts machine which isn't connected to the 'net? OK, so there's USB thumb drives. But not if your PC is ancient (USB 1) and you want to be home in time for dinner.

[ort888]

CDR?

Thumbdrive?

You can buy a 4 gig thumb drive for 10 bucks. You can also buy a USB2 PCI card for about $20.

How much is a Zip disc these days?

[Uncle Doof]

Originally Posted by ort888 

CDR?

Pain in the ass to keep those in a 30-day cycle. Either you're wasting CDRs or you're blanking CDRWs a lot.

Originally Posted by ort888 

Thumbdrive?

<shrug>
No point spending good beer money just to upgrade the backup system.

[olePigeon]

Jaz drives were actually pretty darn good. They were just a single HDD platter in a cartridge with the head inside the drive. They're actually still used a lot because of their reliability.

Still, you can't beat tape drives for reliability.