I was cleaning out an elderly relative's house and discovered a bunch of boxes of floppies and Iomega Zip disks. I don't have any old Macs. The iMac I am using right now is an old late 2015 version that is now running 10.13.6 (High Sierra). I have nothing SCSI or any parallel ports. Not knowing what is on the disks, I don't want to just throw them out. Might be old family photos or letters, or something of value not to people going through trash, but to other family members. I don't want to spend money to send these boxes off to some company/service that will transfer the data for a fee? I can still read CDs, and DVDs. I can still view and transfer VHS and 8mm tapes, but I have no way of dealing with the 3.5" floppies and the Zip disks. My choices are this iMac that I just mentioned, an iPad, an iPhone and a MacBook from 2013.

USB Zip Drive.

USB Floppy Drive.

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Aloha, Ken


“I have developed significant attachments to several members even though I wouldn't recognize them if I sat next to one on a park bench. I'm often tempted when in an airport to walk around, hollering "The Løpe", to see if anyone other than the Homeland Security people will acknowledge me. ” - The Løpe

Amazon has both usb floppy and zip drives. Floppy drives are relatively inexpensive, zip drives are pricey in my opinion. May want to look at the used option to see what is available.

All,

Duh!! Thanks. I see one external USB Zip drive for sale on eBay. The Amazon listings are crazy expensive. Not willing to pay $200 for one of these. Do I then need to run this in a virtual window? I mean I can't see how it is going to read data off of a zip disk or floppy that may have been formatted in OS 7, 8 or 9, if I am now running OS X. Do I need to download an emulator? Or if it is really just text, GIFs and JPEGs, will it still be able to be read once connected to this iMac?

Pick up one of PeterB's machines. Something in the pile must have a Zip Drive.

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C(-)ris
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C(-)ris
Pick up one of PeterB's machines. Something in the pile must have a Zip Drive.

Ummm I have like 2-3 internal Zip drives, and 2-3 external ones (including SCSI and USB) ... I didn't list any of that because ... well ... the list was already getting too long.

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

I gave like a gazillion computers (w/ internal Zips) and mass quantities of external zip drives to Harbourmaster over the years, including IIRC, the very rare, venerable VST wavy red FW Zip 250 drive. For emergencies, I kept USB floppy and Zip drives, as well as floppy and Zip modules for the swappable drive bay in my Pismo.



Several years ago, when I was consolidating all the acquired Zip data, I found that a bunch of Zip disks were finicky about being read, and sometimes I had to try a few different drives in order to get the data off of them. There were only maybe 2 or 3 Zip disks that exhibited the dreaded click-of-death and could not be recovered.

Borrow a USB Zip drive locally, and get as much data off as you can, then maybe send the stubborn disks out for recovery, or borrow another Zip drive and try again. I'm gonna assume the disks are 100's and 250's, and not 750's. When I did my final project, I had four or five Zip drives going at once. Not what I'd call fun, but more a reason to celebrate when done. Where are you located?
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......the old guys will be happy that someone is interested in reading their old....floppies [ modern medicine can now help with the old floppy situation ]......

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!

All I think of when I see Zip Discs is the infamous "Click Of Death". Good luck.

Do the floppies have two holes at the bottom, or one? Do they have an "HD" logo?
If two holes and/or HD logo, they should work with a USB floppy drive. If only one hole and/or without the HD logo, they won't.

The floppies have two holes at the bottom. The Zip disks are all of the 100 variety.

You might try calling a local print shop or embodiery shop. Floppies are still being used in that business. Maybe they will read it for you. Any idea if they are pc or Mac format?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2019 11:09AM by pqrst.

Check your local craigslist, you might luck out. I saw a USB ZIP 100 on Long Island for $25, "never used."

If you can get a USB drive, you can even get the files onto an iPad!
[youtu.be]

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San Antonio, TX (in the old city)


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WOW!! Thank you all. Zip drive is on the way from an eBay seller and I still do not have the 3.5" floppy drive yet. I might still have a Bronze keyboard G3 Lombard 333MHz Powerbook, but with no battery and no power cord, I have no way to see if it will boot. It used to have modules that acted like a DVD/CD player, Zip drive and even a floppy diskette I think. Need to get to my dad's attic this weekend. I hope I find something worthwhile on all of the discs after going through all of this. LOL!!!

....check your local library....some still have 'backward' technology.....

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!