Zip drive

The Zip drive was a series of removable disk drives from Iomega.

Description
Zip drives used floppy-like cartridges with storage capacities ranging from 100 to 750 megabytes. Both internal and external drives were manufactured, making the drive suitable for backup, mass storage or for moving files between computers. Software was included to help with file organization. The internal SCSI model offered up to a 60 MB / minute transfer rate.

History
The Zip 100 was introduced in March 1995 with the ability to read and write 100 MB disks that cost about 20, a good cost-per-megabyte value at the time. Later versions supported 250 and 750 MB disks, with backwards compatibility with older disks at slower speeds or read-only mode.



Adoption by Apple
Zip drives were offered by Apple Computer as an internal build-to-order option in the Power Macintosh 7600, 8600, 9600, G3, and G4 desktop computers. It was also offered as a removable drive bay module for some portable models, such as the PowerBook 1400, 3400c, and G3 series. Internal Zip drives were eventually phased out from Macs in the early 2000s as Apple embraced the use of rewritable optical drives.

Reception
The Zip drive was selected as the hardware product of the year by 's Readers' Choice Awards in 1996. Zip disks quickly eclipsed other technologies, such as and SyQuest cartridges. However, they were also plagued by reliability problems, notably the "". The Zip was superseded by Iomega's own Jaz drive, with cartridges capacities of 1 to 2 gigabytes.