Rating: 
Summary: Mostly Useful, But Some Vexing Problems
Review: Eighteen months ago, I would have cheerfully told you that there was no reason for anyone to waste money on a Zip drive. The largest capacity model then available was the 250, which was less than half of what a CD-RW could hold. CD burners were shipping pretty much as standard on all new computers. I grudgingly shelled out the money for a Zip drive on my new home machine only because I needed some way of transferring data from the old one, which had a Zip 100 drive but no CD burner.It didn't take me long to realize what a very wise investment I'd made. I prefer to synchronize my important documents and system settings using Scooter Software's "Beyond Compare", which does a tremendous job of not only synchronizing files and entire directory trees, but scanning each file byte-by-byte for any signs of changes and/or corruption. It's very easy to update or repair any file the program flags. What I discovered very quickly was that CD-RW drives were utterly worthless for this task. It didn't matter whether I used Roxio's "Direct CD", which came with my home computer, or Nero's much-touted "InCD". The former constantly and reliably corrupted my data, while the latter just as reliably crashed my computer every time I tried it. So suddenly I found myself using that Zip 250 as my main means of file backup, along with a spare external hard drive. But, of course, 250 MB is not, by today's standards, a great deal of space. I needed three disks to do the job, and these were almost full. Plus, the Zip drive was painfully slow. Thus, when Iomega announced their new Zip 750, I took immediate notice. I have actually worked with two of these devices. The one at home is a FireWire model running on Windows XP, while the one at work, running on Windows 2000, is the nearly identical USB 2.0 model featured on this page. Setup of the USB device on Windows 2000 is fairly straight-forward. You plug it into your USB port, wait for Windows Plug-and-Play to recognize it, then install some drivers from the included CD. The CD also includes Iomega Tools, allowing you to do things like write- or password-protect your Zip disk. They also offer a basic file backup utility. Since I haven't done anything with these, I can't comment on how well they work. Since my work machine has USB 1.0 rather than the faster USB 2.0, the drive doesn't run as fast as my FireWire unit, which has the same maximum speed rating. But the performance is still not bad. I've been using the drives for half a year, and basically I've been happy with them. While not as fast as a hard drive, they're certainly a major improvement over the Zip 250. I have yet to see one file be corrupted under normal circumstances, and "Beyond Compare" has done literally dozens of very thorough scans on my backups. This is the very first time in my nearly 20 years of working with PCs that I can say with reasonable certainty that my backups are secure. One performance bottleneck I've encountered is, according to Iomega's web site, due to the way Windows operates. Namely, copying (or comparing) large numbers of small files is drastically slower than copying small numbers of large files, even if the overall byte count is the same. So I use PKZip in a few places to create larger archives for faster copying. One reason I don't give this drive five stars is because of a dangerous design flaw. This is a very handsome-looking drive with a bright, shiny, metal plate on top. Unfortunately, said metal is an excellent conductor of static electricity. The very night I installed the drive on my home computer, I zapped it with my finger while attempting to insert a disk. This immediately knocked the drive off-line, and nothing but turning the computer off, then back on, would get Windows to recognize it again. My heart about stopped until I was satisfied that no permanent damage was done, either to the drive or to the computer. Considering how light the drive is, there is no way to avoid touching it while doing an insert. Otherwise it simply slides backwards as you push. The solution? Decidedly low-tech! I powered everything down, unplugged the drive, took that handy little anti-static bag the thing shipped in, wrapped it around the drive, and Scotch-taped it in place! I did the same at work. Since then, no problems! The Zip 750 will reliably read and write the older Zip 250 disks (albeit more slowly), and will even read (but not write to) my ancient Zip 100 disks. One more serious problem cropped up right after I downloaded Windows 2000 Service Pack 3: the drive started hanging during file synchronizations, and the only way to make it stop was to unplug it. Then I'd have to run "chkdsk /f" to repair some lost clusters, and recopy the damaged file. I went to Iomega's on-line chat service and spoke to the ususal grammatically challenged tech-support hack. It seems that the only "fix" for now is to disable the Norton Antivirus background scan for the drive. Gee, guys! Doesn't this defeat the purpose of scanning for viruses? Good thing I've stopped reading disks from other machines! Another problem arose when I attempted to transfer files between my home and work computers. Windows XP doesn't seem to have any problems reading disks written, or even just read, under Windows 2000, but the reverse is not true. Again I'd experience hangs, and would have to run "chkdsk /f". The same tech-support guy told me that the two versions of Windows "just don't like each other". The solution? Don't transfer files between Windows versions! (Ugh!) Still, by and large, I find the drive to be worth the money, a reliable backup solution.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly Useful, But Some Vexing Problems
Review: Eighteen months ago, I would have cheerfully told you that there was no reason for anyone to waste money on a Zip drive. The largest capacity model then available was the 250, which was less than half of what a CD-RW could hold. CD burners were shipping pretty much as standard on all new computers. I grudgingly shelled out the money for a Zip drive on my new home machine only because I needed some way of transferring data from the old one, which had a Zip 100 drive but no CD burner. It didn't take me long to realize what a very wise investment I'd made. I prefer to synchronize my important documents and system settings using Scooter Software's "Beyond Compare", which does a tremendous job of not only synchronizing files and entire directory trees, but scanning each file byte-by-byte for any signs of changes and/or corruption. It's very easy to update or repair any file the program flags. What I discovered very quickly was that CD-RW drives were utterly worthless for this task. It didn't matter whether I used Roxio's "Direct CD", which came with my home computer, or Nero's much-touted "InCD". The former constantly and reliably corrupted my data, while the latter just as reliably crashed my computer every time I tried it. So suddenly I found myself using that Zip 250 as my main means of file backup, along with a spare external hard drive. But, of course, 250 MB is not, by today's standards, a great deal of space. I needed three disks to do the job, and these were almost full. Plus, the Zip drive was painfully slow. Thus, when Iomega announced their new Zip 750, I took immediate notice. I have actually worked with two of these devices. The one at home is a FireWire model running on Windows XP, while the one at work, running on Windows 2000, is the nearly identical USB 2.0 model featured on this page. Setup of the USB device on Windows 2000 is fairly straight-forward. You plug it into your USB port, wait for Windows Plug-and-Play to recognize it, then install some drivers from the included CD. The CD also includes Iomega Tools, allowing you to do things like write- or password-protect your Zip disk. They also offer a basic file backup utility. Since I haven't done anything with these, I can't comment on how well they work. Since my work machine has USB 1.0 rather than the faster USB 2.0, the drive doesn't run as fast as my FireWire unit, which has the same maximum speed rating. But the performance is still not bad. I've been using the drives for half a year, and basically I've been happy with them. While not as fast as a hard drive, they're certainly a major improvement over the Zip 250. I have yet to see one file be corrupted under normal circumstances, and "Beyond Compare" has done literally dozens of very thorough scans on my backups. This is the very first time in my nearly 20 years of working with PCs that I can say with reasonable certainty that my backups are secure. One performance bottleneck I've encountered is, according to Iomega's web site, due to the way Windows operates. Namely, copying (or comparing) large numbers of small files is drastically slower than copying small numbers of large files, even if the overall byte count is the same. So I use PKZip in a few places to create larger archives for faster copying. One reason I don't give this drive five stars is because of a dangerous design flaw. This is a very handsome-looking drive with a bright, shiny, metal plate on top. Unfortunately, said metal is an excellent conductor of static electricity. The very night I installed the drive on my home computer, I zapped it with my finger while attempting to insert a disk. This immediately knocked the drive off-line, and nothing but turning the computer off, then back on, would get Windows to recognize it again. My heart about stopped until I was satisfied that no permanent damage was done, either to the drive or to the computer. Considering how light the drive is, there is no way to avoid touching it while doing an insert. Otherwise it simply slides backwards as you push. The solution? Decidedly low-tech! I powered everything down, unplugged the drive, took that handy little anti-static bag the thing shipped in, wrapped it around the drive, and Scotch-taped it in place! I did the same at work. Since then, no problems! The Zip 750 will reliably read and write the older Zip 250 disks (albeit more slowly), and will even read (but not write to) my ancient Zip 100 disks. One more serious problem cropped up right after I downloaded Windows 2000 Service Pack 3: the drive started hanging during file synchronizations, and the only way to make it stop was to unplug it. Then I'd have to run "chkdsk /f" to repair some lost clusters, and recopy the damaged file. I went to Iomega's on-line chat service and spoke to the ususal grammatically challenged tech-support hack. It seems that the only "fix" for now is to disable the Norton Antivirus background scan for the drive. Gee, guys! Doesn't this defeat the purpose of scanning for viruses? Good thing I've stopped reading disks from other machines! Another problem arose when I attempted to transfer files between my home and work computers. Windows XP doesn't seem to have any problems reading disks written, or even just read, under Windows 2000, but the reverse is not true. Again I'd experience hangs, and would have to run "chkdsk /f". The same tech-support guy told me that the two versions of Windows "just don't like each other". The solution? Don't transfer files between Windows versions! (Ugh!) Still, by and large, I find the drive to be worth the money, a reliable backup solution.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Useful
Review: I bought this for school, and I have found it to be very useful. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it's unable to write to 100mb Zip disks.
Rating:
Summary: Big Capacity, Easy to Use
Review: I have been happy with my three older zip drives, and this drive is continuing my unbroken string of satisfaction with Iomega products. Installation: The software installed cleanly. I love boring installations!
Connectivity: The drive ran fine on a hub. It helps that it is self-powered and doesn't need to draw power off the USB line. It comes with an adapter-at least my drive did. (The "Technical Data" section of this site's product description says that the drive is powered by your USB cable. But if you choose to use the adapter, I doubt that that statement is correct.) I later installed a USB 2.0 card and gave the zip drive its own port, but it is still plugged into the adapter. Speed: Speed is relative. Even with the obsolete USB 1, the 750 was faster than my 4x CD-RW, my previous backup engine. And now with USB 2.0, it writes a 175 MB zip file in 45 seconds. Human Factors: Another reviewer complained that this drive is so lightweight that it just scoots backwards when you try to insert a disk. He's right. So I took a crude but effective approach to "planting" the drive. I took a big piece of duct tape and taped the drive to the top of my system unit. Now the drive is in a real handy spot, and it doesn't budge when I insert a disk. So what if it's no longer portable, and it's more like an internal drive. That's OK. Vulnerable to static discharge? It is, according to one reviewer, who had a spark leap from his finger to the drive, and said spark temporarily knocked his drive out of commission. I have had no such problem because with the drive taped in place, I don't have to hold it down with one hand when inserting a disk. So I don't need to touch the case. Also, it may help that the drive is against my system unit's metal case. Some nitpicking:
(1) This drive is much noisier than my previous three zip drives (all internal). Its "zip" noises are loud and raspy.
(2) Dust might get inside the drive because there is more air space around the door than I have ever seen on a drive. I hope it won't collect enough dust to damage it. I see no way to safely clean it out.
(3) Iomega innovates so quickly that any Iomega product you buy may soon be obsolete. SAVE THE ANTI-STATIC BAG that the drive ships in. If you ever need to carry the drive somewhere, you can use the bag to protect it from static and keep that loose penny in your purse or briefcase from slipping into it.
Rating:
Summary: Big Capacity, Easy to Use
Review: I have been happy with my three older zip drives, and this drive is continuing my unbroken string of satisfaction with Iomega products. Installation: The software installed cleanly. I love boring installations!
Connectivity: The drive ran fine on a hub. It helps that it is self-powered and doesn't need to draw power off the USB line. It comes with an adapter-at least my drive did. (The "Technical Data" section of this site's product description says that the drive is powered by your USB cable. But if you choose to use the adapter, I doubt that that statement is correct.) I later installed a USB 2.0 card and gave the zip drive its own port, but it is still plugged into the adapter. Speed: Speed is relative. Even with the obsolete USB 1, the 750 was faster than my 4x CD-RW, my previous backup engine. And now with USB 2.0, it writes a 175 MB zip file in 45 seconds. Human Factors: Another reviewer complained that this drive is so lightweight that it just scoots backwards when you try to insert a disk. He's right. So I took a crude but effective approach to "planting" the drive. I took a big piece of duct tape and taped the drive to the top of my system unit. Now the drive is in a real handy spot, and it doesn't budge when I insert a disk. So what if it's no longer portable, and it's more like an internal drive. That's OK. Vulnerable to static discharge? It is, according to one reviewer, who had a spark leap from his finger to the drive, and said spark temporarily knocked his drive out of commission. I have had no such problem because with the drive taped in place, I don't have to hold it down with one hand when inserting a disk. So I don't need to touch the case. Also, it may help that the drive is against my system unit's metal case. Some nitpicking:
(1) This drive is much noisier than my previous three zip drives (all internal). Its "zip" noises are loud and raspy.
(2) Dust might get inside the drive because there is more air space around the door than I have ever seen on a drive. I hope it won't collect enough dust to damage it. I see no way to safely clean it out.
(3) Iomega innovates so quickly that any Iomega product you buy may soon be obsolete. SAVE THE ANTI-STATIC BAG that the drive ships in. If you ever need to carry the drive somewhere, you can use the bag to protect it from static and keep that loose penny in your purse or briefcase from slipping into it.
Rating: 
Summary: Most people won't need this drive
Review: I have been using Zip disks for over 6 years now. 98% of the time, me and my colleagues use 100MB disks, and the rest of the time we use 250MB. I have never seen anyone use 750MB disks, and have never seen any computer with a 750MB Zip drive (except the one I own). That means most people would never use this drive for transferring stuff between computers. The only reason for getting this drive is if you want to back up your own files, but that can be done much better using CDs and DVDs. Besides its limited use, this 750MB drive can read from but not write to 100MB disks, which can be quite inconvenient at times. On the other hand, a 250MB drive can read from and write to both 250MB and 100MB disks. So, you may be better off getting a 250MB Zip drive.
Rating: 
Summary: WINDOWS XP SP1 USERS BEWARE OF THIS DEVICE!
Review: It performs v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y !!! Unfortunately this negative feedback is coming from someone who really likes Iomega products. I've had their Zip products for years, really like their Zip USB 1.1 250MB drive and the 128MB USB 1.1 Mini Drive, both acquired recently, yet this one is going back. The problem, I'm pretty sure, is WINXP SP1's support for USB 2.0 disk devices when attached to USB 2.0 ports. Other combinations perform well. I have written several articles on USB 2.0 mini drive products here on Amazon giving those products great reviews, but NOT until I formatted those devices as "NTFS". There's something about FAT and FAT32 formats that's in conflict with WINXP. Nonetheless, I was optimistic about buying the ZIP 750 because I figured that if it runs slow like the 2.0 mini-drives, I'll just format it as "NTFS". However, six hours after buying it, it was back in its box; I had given up in frustration. My benchmark was a web site that weighed 120MB, containing 2899 files. No point starting small given my experience with USB 2.0 mini-drives. Well, it took 10.5 minutes, which was an awfully long time for a 2.0 device on 2.0 ports on a fast Pentium 4. So, I tried to format it as "NTFS" and Iomega's software didn't support anything but "FAT". Not even "FAT32". I saw articles on Iomega's web site indicating that they don't recommend "NTFS" for Zip products, yet they provide instructions on how to use WINXP to do the formatting instead of their own software. It's not point and click, folks ... but never mind, because once I formatted it as NTFS this benchmark ran in 12 mins 50 secs. 10MB a minute is not good! Before I packed it up to return it to OfficeMax, I ran this benchmark on my 5+ year old computer which has WIN98 and some seldom used USB 1.1 ports and it ran my benchmark on the Iomega 750 in 4 minutes or so, but not before hanging me twice. Not one to give up without a fight, I reinstalled my Iomega 250 USB 1.1 on the WINXP computer and the benchmark data ran at 4+ minutes. I was not at all surprised. By the way, since you asked, the benchmark ran in 1 min 25 secs on my PNY USB 2.0 Attache mini drive (NTFS, remember). Using that as a standard, the Iomega USB 750 should have run this benchmark in less than 2.5 mins ... if it did, I would have kept it. In summary, if your computer has WINXP SP1 and USB 2.0 ports, you are extremely likely to have the same miserable performance I've had. Please buy the product from a dealer who will take it back. And ... don't be beguiled by reviews that say it was really fast when they copied a single 120MB file in only 1.5 minutes or so. That might be true, but it's not the way we use computers. Thanks for your time.
Rating:
Summary: Good while it lasted.
Review: My 750MB Zip drive malfuctioned just after the warranty had expired. Beware!
Rating:
Summary: Good while it lasted.
Review: Omigod---just bought two of these drives and now they both, with regularity, destroy any disks used in them. But not immediately...everything works great for about 3-4 files, then at some point the drive starts to run, and run, and run---and at the end, you have no files, and 250 MB disks cannot be reformatted (can only do short format on these). Iomega gneraously replaced my disks; great, now all the replacements are corrupted. I guess it's the click of death--the symptoms are very similar in terms of what happens to the disks, but the drives do not click! Iomega tech support never heard of this, naturally. Although cheap, I don't care much for CD-RWs, so I've gone to MO disks---much more reliable, I've never had a failure.
Rating:
Summary: The click of death lives!
Review: Omigod---just bought two of these drives and now they both, with regularity, destroy any disks used in them. But not immediately...everything works great for about 3-4 files, then at some point the drive starts to run, and run, and run---and at the end, you have no files, and 250 MB disks cannot be reformatted (can only do short format on these). Iomega gneraously replaced my disks; great, now all the replacements are corrupted. I guess it's the click of death--the symptoms are very similar in terms of what happens to the disks, but the drives do not click! Iomega tech support never heard of this, naturally. Although cheap, I don't care much for CD-RWs, so I've gone to MO disks---much more reliable, I've never had a failure.
| 
