Iomega ZIP - The forgotten storage unit

Today there are many ways to share a video game in the world of PC gaming, either in the cloud, by an external hard drive, Pendrive or even a CD, allowing users to share their experiences with their colleagues by expanding any type of game around the world.

But we must take into account that there has always been a limiting factor, this is the space these games occupy in the memory. Over the years, both storage units and video games took up more space, so it was necessary to update our equipment to be able to enjoy them.

There was a time when a company revolutionized portable storage in a surprising way, allowing many gamers to share their games from one pc to another without many complications, this was Iomega and its forgotten floppy disk called ZIP.

Before speaking about Iomega and the ZIP we must remember a little as it was the external storage between the 80s and mid 90s, at that time there were the famous diskettes which were popularized 3 types, the first called Floppy Disk which had a capacity of 1 MB, then the MiniFloppy 5¼, its capacity was between 100 Kb and 1.2 Mb and finally and the most remembered of all the Microfloppy 3½ that could save from 1.44 Mb to 2.88 Mb.

Under this storage concept, Iomega launched its unique ZIP drive at the end of 1994, which was characterized by a hard disk with a capacity of 100 MB. In addition, the company assured that this data was not eliminated as easily as with the Microfloppy 3½ since many times they presented this problem.

Soon they would release two floppy disks with a higher capacity, one 250 MB and one 750 MB, allowing both gamers and executives ample file-carrying power, making the Floppy drives completely obsolete due to their small size.

Although in those years there were already CD-ROM drives with the ability to copy files were too expensive, also keep in mind that they could only record once without having the ability to delete data, instead a 750 megabyte ZIP could do this task as many times as you want.

Of these ZIP units there were two types, external and internal. The external ZIP units had to be connected to the computer through the LTP1 port which was commonly used for printers, it also had an output port of the same type, this way you could have your printer connected at the same time as the ZIP unit.

The internal ZIP or also known as IDE ZIP shared the same connection of the hard disks of those years, that is to say, they had to be connected to the IDE port of the mother cards, these were very looked for because they were much faster than the external ones, allowing a more pleasant and satisfactory experience.

Everything pointed out that the Iomega ZIP was revolutionizing data portability and storage, many gamers even used it to have their favorite video game gallery, emulators, etc. So why did it fail in the marketplace?

The first batch of ZIP drives came with a defect which would completely destroy the confidence of users in these devices, this was called Click of Death due to the sound it made, when you heard it you had to consider your ZIP drive dead and discard the floppy disk, if by any chance you put that floppy disk in a ZIP drive in good condition you automatically damaged it, as if it were a virus.

Over time, this error became a big problem for Iomega, because no one wanted a system that would soon become unusable. In addition, new storage systems such as Flash Drives were coming onto the market, making the floppy disk completely obsolete.

Only the most enthusiasts in this system would remain using these drives until they realized that other external storage was more profitable, faster and cheaper, in addition the gamers are the first in the world of the PC that always look for the newest and most innovative, so they would quickly emigrate leaving these old drives in oblivion.