When this bad boy hit the market my best friend talked it up like it was the best thing since sliced bread! He would constantly talk up this device till I was sold. Also being a design student my files were getting more complex, bigger, and better. I needed a way to get my files to Art School or the Career Center and home again.
This bad boy came in standard IDE and SCSI formats. I picked up a SCSI card and velcrowed the drive under the corner of my desk over my computer. The SCSI increased the R/W Speeds.
Of course, we all know that the Jazz Drive hit from the same manufacturer, but it never took off with disks that cost a fortune. Sure it had a massive amount of space however by then one could have a standard CD-R from 650mb for far far less and the only problem you’d have is writing them getting that dreaded “Buffer Underrun Error”. So sure you bought a spindle and oh 1/4 of that spindle wound up as either coasters or trash due to that error.
But the ZIP Drive was great! Reliability was awesome and the disks came in multiple colors eventually! How can you argue with all that? There was also an internal version of the drive but come on who would want that when they could bring their drive wherever they went (except me cuz. I had a SCSI model) I chose speed over transporting my drive everywhere. My best friend had a parallel version and being we were always around each other bam instant drive!
The one thing to look out for was that you USED it only as a transport method because at any time you would hear the dreaded *CLICK* of the disk going bad… Ah, memories.
