How to Choose a Zip Drive

Zip drives are some of the most popular removable-media storage devices. A lot fits on one disk, the disks are easily portable and the drives are fairly inexpensive.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Zip Drives

1. Buy a 100-MB Zip drive if you need less than 1 GB of storage capacity; otherwise, choose a 250-MB Zip drive.

2. Look for an internal Zip drive if you need limited storage capability, will use the drive only for backup and can install the drive yourself.

3. Choose an external drive for the most versatility and portability (you can connect the drive to different computers easily).

4. Buy the correct drive for the port you're going to connect it to. Save money by buying a parallel port Zip drive if speed is unimportant. Buy a universal serial bus (USB) Zip drive, if your computer has USB ports, for more speed and greatest ease of connectivity. Buy a SCSI Zip drive, if your computer has a SCSI port, for the greatest speed.

5. Purchase a ZipPlus drive with both parallel port and SCSI connectivity for the best combination of speed and versatility.

Tips & Warnings

• You'll need to purchase and install a SCSI card to use a SCSI Zip drive with any PC and most newer Macintosh computers.
• Zip drives themselves are inexpensive, but the costs of the disks can add up. If you're going to be backing up or archiving lots of data regularly, consider a CD-R or CD-RW drive instead. (CD-ROMs can hold more than 500 MB of data, and the discs are cheap.) If portability of the media doesn't matter, consider an external hard drive as well.

on 11/22/2005 While CD-RWs hold more space and can be written over, you must erase the entire disk first. Zip drives operate like floppies, and with the new Zip 700, you can store more than a CD on one disk. Keep in mind that a Zip 100 can only read 100MB disks, the Zip 250 can read 100MB and 250MB, and the Zip 700 can read all three.