Iomega 10919 Zip 100 Drive (Parallel Port)

Iomega says it has sold over 100 million of its 100 MB Zip disks, the floppy companions to the Zip 100 drive, and we believe them based on how easy it was for us to set up and use the Zip 100. We just plugged it in, connected a cable to our PC's parallel port, dropped in the CD-ROM, and followed the setup wizard.

The CD-ROM comes with the necessary software to make the Zip 100 act like any other drive on your PC--except the Zip 100 has a 100-MB storage capacity. We set the drive up on our test machine and copying files to and from drive F was just as easy as it was on drive A or C.

You can still use your printer with the Zip 100, as the external drive includes its own parallel port. Iomega recommends that you connect no more than one additional device to the Zip 100, but in our test, we "daisy chained" three peripherals--a printer connected to a scanner connected to the Zip 100 connected to our PC--without encountering any device conflicts.

We used the included 1-Step Backup and 1-Step Restore utilities to back up and restore several hundred megabytes of an old Pentium's hard disk. The process was entirely intuitive and flawless but slow. We did not even approach the claimed 25-MB-per-minute performance, but that's just the way peripheral life is when you're using a parallel port.

The Zip 100 is self-contained, and if you take along the parallel cable and AC power supply, it becomes portable. However, the real convenience comes from the Zip disks themselves. The disks have a tough plastic shell and come in a CD-type jewel box, so little protective precautions are required as you exchange data with Zip-owning friends.

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Easy to install and use
• Portable
• Rewritable media

Cons

• Slow data-transfer rate
• Impractical for backing up more than a few hundred megabytes

I am sent files all the time via the Network GroupWare e-mail system. I never wanted to hook my Mac up through all the logging in and everything involved in a Novell system, so I never got the Mac version of the software to connect my Mac fully to the network.

So, when someone sends me a file via GroupWise, I copy the attachment onto my ZIP disk and then eject that disk and put it in my Mac to work on the file. Not the most efficient way to go about things, but this 100MB Iomega ZIP drive hasn't failed me once in the past 4 years.

Since the Mac OS can read both Mac and PC ZIP disks, I use PC formatted disks and move them back and forth from Windows (the Parallel drive) to Mac (the factory installed 250MB drive) all day long.

ZIP disks can hold an equivalent of about 74 floppy disks and the speed is lightning fast when compared to floppies. My only gripe is that Iomega does not make these drives with an on/off switch... even if your computer is off for a week, you've got to unplug your ZIP drive if you don't want it to eat up electricity. Honestly, I doubt that a little ZIP drive that isn't spinning a disk uses more than a single kilowatt hour per month, but it's a waste nonetheless. This one gripe wasn't enough of a drawback to take a star away from the 5 star rating I'm giving this gizmo. It's dependable, it's fast and ZIP is an industry standard. Hats off to Iomega.


Reliable, But Slow   January 20, 2002
Very easy to install and operate. Data transfer with larger files is slow. The zip disks and drives are very reliable!