All right Escapist, who remembers Zip Drives?

[EstrogenicMuscle]

I know we have a lot of PC nuts for some reason or another. More than most gaming sites seem to. So I know we've got some people around here who will remember the zip drive.

Let's get nostalgic for some old, but not that old hardware. Zip drives.

Discs are overrated. Before flash drives took off, Zip drives were your alternative.
They looked great and I loved their shape. They made my computer feel like a Nintendo 64.

And who didn't want their PC to be a Nintendo 64?

And who needs discs? Discs are terrible and I hate them. Blu-Rays sounded interesting for about 5 weeks until you realized they're just as annoying as every other disc format. If I'm going to deal with physical media, I'd rather it be on a disk. The 3DS is still using disks and why not? I'd rather have my PlayStation 3 and Wii games on a USB flash disk than a Blu-Ray or such.

I remember those good old days with Zip Drives. Windows 2000 and similar time period computers. I can talk about emulation and using roms as long as I didn't illegally download them, right? I used to have a zip disk with all of my SNES and Game Boy games on it that I would take literally everywhere. And I loved it dearly. I don't know whether that was PC or console gaming but my did I sure get a kick out of having all my Super Nintendo games on one disk.

I just took a zip disk and loaded it up full of Nintendo goodness and I had fun. Forgive me PC gamers, but that was PC gaming to me. Pokemon Yellow and Super Mario World on a Zip Drive Disk. As well as loads of my favourite songs, pictures, and videos. Anymore, you can do all that on a smartphone, such things aren't that impressive. But back then, that seemed like the most amazing thing.

Come on y'all. Nostalgia. This stuff was great.

 

[Aris Khandr]

I had a zip drive. Those things lasted like, what, two months before writable CDs came out and utterly destroyed them?

The expanded storage capacity over normal discs was nice. But it was all over when CD-RW became a thing.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Yeah I remember those. They were supposed to replace floppy disks. Never panned out though. IIRC that was because of a disagreement btwn the developer of the Zip drives and the major PC manufacturers, well then of course writable CDs came along rendering them obsolete.

 

[tilmoph]

I remember those, never got one, but I think one of my way more techhy friends had one for a spell. Can't remember what he used it for.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I have a serial-based Zip Drive that I've had for ages. Still works as far as I know.
They were pretty much necessary for when I was in high school, between Macromedia Flash, C++ and the bloated fat-code of whatever webpage program we were using the measly 10MB of HD space and 1.44MB of a floppy was nowhere near enough.

Burning everything to CD wasn't viable either. Even re-writables had a (very) limited number of burn-ins.

 

[Realitycrash]

I remember them. They sucked. Now, those bigger ones that could take 700mb, they were da' bomb!

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

Yeah I remember those. They were supposed to replace floppy disks. Never panned out though. IIRC that was because of a disagreement btwn the developer of the Zip drives and the major PC manufacturers, well then of course writable CDs came along rendering them obsolete.

Even when CDs came out I still liked ZIP drives better for certain purposes after the whole mystique of "wow, I can finally burn my own music CDs" and ect. wore off.

CD-RW did exist, but wasn't as approachable for repeated rewrite usages like zip disks were.

CDs were great to put your movies and music on. But for someone like me who liked putting roms, emulators, and the occasional PC game I owned on them, something you would frequently write to, Zip discs were so much better. I would put every game I owned on a zip disk and take it and an external zip drive with me everywhere. If a family member had a computer, I would just plug it in and play Pokemon Yellow.

Again, for frequent writing, zip disks were simply better. And for things like games that's what you want.

I'd honestly use something like this again if it were feasible. I hate Blu-Rays. Unfortunately, that won't really happen, because usb "flash" disks have made that sort of thing totally obsolete. People just don't want big disks. In fact, the closest thing nowadays to something like that would be SD Cards. Which are much smaller, but carry a lot of data. And are really fast, thanks to USB 3.0.

Which isn't a big disappointment, smaller but more powerful technology is better. But for nostalgia and for large storage, I honestly wouldn't mind something like a disk again. I mean, as a replacement for things like Blu-Rays. I'd rather have something the size of a Blu-Ray disc, in a disk format. I assume this is because discs have been made so cheaply for a long time. Though, to be honest, SSDs and USB Flash Discs, and SD cards, for that matter, are becoming really cheap.

I'd be happy if Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all moves on from discs and onto disks. I'd much happier own my games on a USB 3.0 Flash disc than a Blu-Ray. It hasn't been too expensive that Nintendo have used discs for their 3DS games.

 

[piinyouri]

I will be completely honest, I am 26 and I've never seen one of those before.

When you said "zip drive" I had heard several people at my college refer to flash drives alternatively as zip drives so I thought they were the same thing.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I remember! My Dad used to keep all of his documents on them back in the day. They made a clicking noise I can still recall.

 

[Amakusa]

Yeah i used to have them. I used them at uni in Canberra in 90s. i didn't enjoy the storage of them, being able to store all my work on one disk. However they didn't last long, for like only a few years. Which is a shame but meh oh well. And now you can get Zip Flash-drives and writeable CDRs which is better anyway.

 

[Norithics]

I loved those things! My old Gateway from '98 came with one. 100 Megs seems trivial now, but back when MP3s were a pipe dream (pages and pages of MIDI files) and images were tiny due to the fact that your maximum resolution was 800x600 (sooo good for pixel art), one of these things could hold a monstrous amount of junk! I used it to back up all my Geocities pages!

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Yeah. They were great until the fucking things broke. Then they were thoroughly shit because they lost all my data. Twice it happened. Fuck Zip drives.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I remember them however they were in my bro era when he used them later on in High School and Uni. Sure I did used them abit however my high school only supported floppy disk and only a few pc has the zip drive slot install in it.
At the end however I got into the start of the whole USB/ flash drive era (starting using it at the start of my uni years).

 

[DoPo]

I remember them. They sucked. Now, those bigger ones that could take 700mb, they were da' bomb!

Eh, they'll never catch on. I mean, what could you possibly put there that takes up the whole space? Surely 1.44 MB is enough for everybody, anything more is just wasted.

OT: I do remember them. Well, never really used one, but I knew they existed. I have even *lowers voice* seen one. And yeah, that was my story with them - I remember hearing about zip drives, thought it sounded cool, saw, like, one or two but by the time I got a PC, CDs had taken over so - meh.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Correction: Zip drives are great. I still use them, mainly because they still work like a charm, offer the flexibility of floppy disks while allowing me to store more data on them. I have both external as well as internal drives fitted, and one is used for... well, experimental purposes. I find them to be great fun and reliable, even though each and every bit of this funky infrastructure has been depreciated a couple of times over. All hail the Zip drive!

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I remember them, never had one though. Up until recently I thought they stopped using magnetic tapes for storage purposes, turns out they still are. 5 Terabyte cartridges if you can believe it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Oh, those were awesome. Either you had a 1.4mb disk, or a 100 or 200mb disk.

Really unfortunate for them that something even better came out very soon afterwards, was much better than what they had before.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

What I remember about those things is no-one bought them, because they came out right around the time CD burners and even re-writable CDs were becoming affordable. I've also heard they had major reliability issues, but I don't know first hand because I don't think I personally know /anyone/ who had one. Maybe my (not actually blood related, but a tech geek and quite literally a scientist) uncle? Even then, I kind of doubt it.

 

[KOMega]

I one of my computers still has a floppy drive on it.

It's not a zip drive, but it's what I had

 

[Dr.Awkward]

My aunt had one back when she got her iMac. This was back in'99 or '00 though, so by then computer retailers were desperate to get rid of them at a low price...