Iomega 31310 Zip 250 MB USB-Powered Drive

I'm pretty much in agreement with the previous reviewer (Jeffery Hauck). In my case my PC tower died just a few days before I went to get this item. When I went to sites which make custom PCs, low & behold that zip drives are no longer made unless I went external... & I've got/used quite a few 100 MB zip disks throughout the years with my old 'puter.

I just got the external & have been putting it through its paces on a laptop (compaq nx9010). Kudos to Amazon or UPS for getting it to me much earlier then expected. So far it's performing to expectations, while noisier then my old internal the noise isn't so bothersome that I can't do anything else. I've also not experienced the slowness that a couple of people have mentioned & I've been putting in a few PDFs into those disks of the 10 MB range.

Having written the above though I'll be the first to admit that the technology is dated, to say the least, which is sad 'cause I liked my zip disks. I could get a 4 GB usb drive for around $20 at this point. I would say get this older tech if you've got zips & transfer them to a usb drive or other external when you can, this is what I intend on doing. As much as I liked my zip & zip disks the reality is that it's kinda the modern day BETA. The reason I gave it 3 stars is that I've yet to get my new tower & try it out & that it's noisier then my old internal zip drive. I may give it another star depending on how it reacts to my new tower.

Unfortunately, I had to purchase this product because of legacy media I owned. I would have preferred not to, but it does function well.

This is a great product. The Zip drive is a much better alternative to the Floppy Drive and just as good as a USB Drive for data backup. I use this on my work desktop and it is great to store important files I don't trust backing up on a floppy. It is also durable and bigger than a USB drive, so I don't have to worry about loosing it.

Like an earlier reviewer I think a product like this should work for more than three years (I'd say at least seven.) But I didn't even get three years out of mine. Unfortunately I bought one in late 2001. It was used on a fairly regular basis for about a year and a half. I hadn't used it since 2003. I recently took it out to retrieve some files and it would not work. Plugged it in, CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK WHIRRRR - cannot read disk - LED blinks continuosly. So while it's been more than three years since I bought the unit I'd say I got something like 2 years of normal usage. It's dead now, and I wouldn't dream of spending $120~$175 to replace it. I'm only considering a replacement purchase to be able to retrieve a few of the files. Basically this is an obsolete product with far superior and cost effective alternatives available.

If I do find a low cost replacement I will quickly retrieve my data and archive it onto DVDR and resell the unit if I can.

In 2001 this drive served a purpose -BFD (before flash drives.) But I wouldn't recommend this technology in 2007.

I'm a long time user of Iomega zip drives. My first computer had an internal 250MB zip drive installed in it. Over the years I've built up quite a collection of zip disk with files stored on them. I bought the external zip drive so I would still be able to access all of those files with my new computer.

(...) My new PC uses Windows Vista as the OS, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was no need to install the driver that was supplied with the zip drive. Windows Vista knew what to do with it soon after I plugged in the USB cable.

The external version is noisier then the internal dive I used for so many years, and it also takes longer to write to, or read files from it. However, the product has been trouble free so far, I've had it a couple of months, and I would recommend it. There is newer technology out there that is both faster, and has a greater storage capacity, but the 250MB zip drive has performed the task I bought it for with no problems.