even though compared to just about everything out there now, they really suck, i've still managed to spend a few hundred dollars on Zip drives and media during the past 7 years.

back in '98 or so, CD burners cost too much. it didnt matter if a blank CD was cheap, paying $300-$500 on a CD 2x or 4x burner that didnt work too well wasnt a real option. so i bought a parallel port Zip drive. $100 for the drive, and $50 for 5 disks. a lot of people back then chose Zip drives over CD burners because of cost.

it was slow as shit, but it worked. (i think the transfer rate was barely 100K/sec over the printer port, which meant filling up 100 Megs took a while). the way it was connected seemed to slow the system down as well. even on today's technology, it still seems to take 100% CPU usage when copying files to a disk.

after a few months use, it became appearent that the Zip hardware and media sucked. disks would start to break down, fall apart, etc. the little floppy material would rot it seemed like. while new disks could be purchased easily, it was when the drive itself started breaking down that it became a nightmare. Zip drives suffered from the "Click of Death" (just google that term). they would click over and over when a disk was inserted, and they didnt operate correctly at all then.

my Zip drive suffered from that. it had always seemed cheaply made, and when it stopped working, it was almost expected.

after getting a CD burner in 2000 for $200 or so, i didnt bother with Zip disks for a while.

when i had to restore an OS on some laptops that didnt have a CD drive, i found that a Zip drive would work perfectly for such situation. just boot from a floppy and load the Zip drive's drivers in DOS.

since my Zip 100 drive broke, i checked eBay for a replacement. i found a cheap Zip 250 drive, which was supposed to be backwards compatible with Zip 100 disks. it was, sorta. transfer rates were SERIOUSLY reduced when a Zip 100 disk was used in a Zip 250 drive. im talking about taking 30 minutes to an hour to copy files off the Zip 100 disk.

after getting a new Zip drive, i found that all but 1 of my Zip disks were bad. so i hit eBay again. i ordered 3 more Zip disks, and another Zip 100 drive to replace the slow Zip 250 drive. all to make things work better with some old laptops that arent worth the trouble.

after getting the Zip 100 drive in the mail, i realized it came with 4 Zip disks as well. with those and the 3 others i got from eBay (along with my 1 original working disk), i now have 8 disks total - and after thinking about it for a little bit, i realize i have absolutely no use for them after restoring files on a CD-less system.

so now i've had a broken Zip 100 drive, a working Zip 100 drive, an internal ATAPI Zip 100 drive, a Zip 250 drive, 8 disks (minus 4 that i've thrown away or lost), and that adds up to a lot of money for some crummy storage that isnt used much.