How To Fix a Zip Disk

Over the normal course of usage, your Zip disk will have large amounts of data continuously saved, deleted and rewritten to it. Eventually the disk may become corrupted if it is used often enough or if it experiences a malfunction. Any data stored on your corrupted Zip disk will be unavailable until the problem is fixed. Depending on the extent of the problem, you may be able to fix the disk with a simple repair program or you may have to completely reformat the disk.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Zip disk repair software

1. Download and install a Zip disk repair utility such as "Advanced Zip Repair" or "Zip Recovery Toolbox."

2. Insert the corrupted Zip disk into your disk drive. Open the repair utility. Navigate to the "Recover" tab or the corresponding option for the specific program you downloaded.

3. Click "Browse" and select the drive letter that corresponds to your corrupted Zip disk. Click "OK." Click "Output Fixed Location" and choose either the Zip disk itself or a folder on your hard drive to save the fixed files.

4. Select "Start Repair" and wait to see if the utility can repair your corrupted files. Attempt to open the files to see if the repair job worked.

5. Close the repair program if you still cannot use the corrupted disk. Open the Start menu and navigate to "My Computer." Right-click the entry for the Zip drive and select "Format."

6. Click "Start Format." Attempt to save a file to the Zip disk once the format process has finished.

Tips & Warnings

• Each Zip repair utility is slightly different and may have different options. Check the program's help files if you need assistance finding which buttons to click to start the repair process.
• Formatting the Zip disk will fix the problem but it will also erase any data that was stored on the disk. You can attempt to recover the deleted data by using a recovery program such as "Bad Copy Pro" or "Zip File Recovery."

References

• Formatting Zip Disks

Resources

• Zip Repair Programs
• Bad Copy Pro ZIP File Recovery Download
• Zip File Recovery Download