Zip Drives

The options for transferring data between machines were limited in the early 1990s. The most common medium used was the 3.5-inch disc that could hold 1.44 megabytes of data. Tape drives and other specialty systems could transfer considerably more information, but they were expensive and focused as enterprise solution. They were rare among computer hobbyists. In 1994, however, Iomega released a new product called the Zip disk drive [1], marketing it as the next generation of removable media.

The Zip drive is a high capacity removable disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB. The format became the most popular of the super-floppy type products which filled a niche in the late 1990s portable storage market. However it was never popular enough to replace the 3.5-inch floppy disk nor could ever match the storage size available on rewritable CDs and later rewritable DVDs that introduced later.

Zip drives initially sold well after their introduction in 1994, owing to their low price and high, for the time, capacity.  Thus, backing up with Zip disks was very economical for home users. Moreover, some computer suppliers such as Dell and Apple included Iomega internal Zip drives with their machines. Zip drives also made significant advances in the graphic arts market, as a cheaper alternative to the Syquest cartridge hard disk system [2]. The price of additional cartridges swiftly dropped further over the next few years, as more companies began supplying them. Eventually, the suppliers included Fujifilm, Verbatim, Toshiba and Maxell. Epson and NEC also produced a licensed 100 MB drive model with its brand name.

Hardware Problems

Unfortunately, the Zip drive design was prone to hardware failure. The read heads of a Zip drive were extremely fragile and could become misaligned through rough usage or power failure, rendering them incapable of reading or writing coherent data. This would cause the heads to snap back and forth inside the drive repeatedly, creating a sound called the "click of death" by users [3]. In addition, a sufficiently damaged Zip disk could actually damage the read heads in a working drive, creating a chain reaction of failing hardware and media in any group where users shared equipment.

Decline

At the time of the Zip drive's introduction, it represented a cost-effective way to back-up and transfer large amounts of data. The development and widespread adoption of recordable CD drives, however, quickly reduced the market share for this type of hardware. Blank CDs could hold around 750 megabytes of data, cost less than a dollar each, and were not prone to the same type of mechanical failures that Zip disks were. The development of rewritable CDs further diminished the Zip drive's appeal, and recordable DVDs cemented optical media's domination of the removable disc market. Though Iomega sold tens of millions of Zip and Jaz drives that worked flawlessly, thousands of the drives died mysteriously, issuing a clicking noise as the drive head became misaligned and clipped the edge of the removable media, rendering any data on that disc permanently inaccessible.

Sales of Zip drives and disks declined steadily from 1999 to 2003.[5] Zip disks had a relatively high cost per megabyte compared to the falling costs of then-new CD-R and CD-RW discs. The growth of hard disk drives to multi-gigabyte capacity made backing up with Zip disks less economical. Furthermore, the advent of inexpensive recordable CD and DVD drives for computers, as well as USB flash drives, pushed the Zip drive out of the mainstream market. However, the advantages of magnetic media over optical media and flash memory, in terms of long-term file storage stability and high erase/rewrite cycles, still affords them a niche in the data storage arena. In such applications, Zip competes primarily with USB external hard drives and the Hi-MD version of Sony's MiniDisc, which stores up to 1 GB on a disk that is smaller and less expensive than a 100 MB Zip disk.

References

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death
[4] upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/ZipDiskNDrive_unitsales_1998to2003.svg