Iomega 31714 100 MB USB-Powered Zip Drive
See it at Amazon.com for $97.50Average Customer Rating
(3.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
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(5 out of 5)Impressively fast.
I got this drive to save on wasted CDs, which mount up, when loaded with lots of small incidentals. Not having used a ZIP drive before I was expecting something like a floppy disc performance on a larger scale, but was surprised at its almost hard drive read / write speed.
It's also good not to have to lug another power unit around with my laptop, as is the negligible demand on system resources unlike that of some portable CD burners. The 100MB capacity may appear paltry by today's standards, yet is sufficient for the majority of instances. The 100MB media is also easier on the pocket.
A disc can be electronically write protected, and read /write protected by using a password. This feature is not available for a CD unless the files are encrypted inside a .ZIP or some other kind of archive file, or an encrypted file, such as ABIcoder. So security is simplified with your ZIP drive.
By plugging the ZIP drive into a USB port it will be recognised as a removable drive, that can be read and written to by dragging and dropping in the normal fashion. Any Iomega features will not be available, for which you have to install the Iomega software.
My experience of this installation is as follows: When the installation is complete, choose the Reboot Later option, and manually restart your computer to finish. The Iomega auto option tends to hang the computer and things don't work out as expected. After re-booting, confirm - in windows - that the Send To drop down, displays the ZIP drive along with your floppy drive, etc. If not, the installation will need to be re-done.
So far I've installed the Iomega software onto a laptop running Win 98 SE and two desktops. One of the desktops - a Win 2000 machine - didn't like it, and will need to be sorted out, since something has gone amiss with the services detection. It works okay after the alert times out, after a couple of minutes, but is irksome. The other desktop, also a Win 2000 machine, installed okay. The problematic machine has been through the wars, so why a problem arose is impossible to say at present. So... if the straightforward removable drive option is sufficient, stick with that: especially if it's someone else's machine your plugging into.
(4 out of 5)best 100mb zip drive model (isn't this the 5th model?!?!)
Good price, great drive. Since it's usb powered, you don't have to drag around a power block with your laptop. I was going to buy the 250mb drive, but realized that most of the zip drives out there are 100mb anyway, and wouldn't read a 250mb zip disk. Out of all of the 100mb zip drive models I've used (the university I go to has different kinds of zip drives in their computer labs), this is my favorite.
...but it is kinda loud.
(3 out of 5)Great at first, but...
I don't know if it's the zip drive or my computer, but after using this zip drive for about 6 months, I now have trouble with it. When I insert a zip disk, the drive does not always respond (usually the green light blinks and it whirs when a disk is inserted). The computer tells me the drive is "inaccessible" and I have to restart the computer to get the disk out. This will also happen if I've used the drive successfully at first but then leave the disk in there. This is all very annoying and slows my work down considerably.
(5 out of 5)Iomega Zip 100 USB is great
After struggling for several months to get a CD-RW drive to work properly, I ordered the Iomega Zip 100 USB drive and it works great. Within 20 minutes of opening the box, I had the Zip drive copying files. The drive works very intuitively and is a breeze to use as compared to the CD-RW drive. The disks only hold 100 MB, but this is more than enough for the needs of my office. I also bought a 6-pack of the Zip disks, which should satisfy my needs for a long time. Try the Iomega Zip drive, you'll like it.
(2 out of 5)I don't like it
On my pentium 4 running windows XP, USB 1.1 connection it works only about 25% of the time.. There seems to some ZIP 100 mb disks that it will read reliably, but other ZIP 100 mb disks are not recognized. The age of the disks makes no difference.
Another computer running win 98 with an internal zip drive reads all disk without problems.
I have had to mark the disks that it will read and use only them in this drive.