Features:
- Complete backup and restore utilities
- Supports 100 MB Zip disks
- Parallel interface
- Portable, external design
- Maximum sustained transfer rate of 1.40 MB/sec
Description:
Is your hard disk running out of room? Do you need to protect your valuable data? Consider Iomega's Parallel Port Zip 100 drive, an inexpensive and portable external disk drive. Iomega says it has sold over 100 million of its 100 MB Zip disks, the floppy companions to the Zip 100 drive, and we believe them based on how easy it was for us to set up and use the Zip 100. We just plugged it in, connected a cable to our PC's parallel port, dropped in the CD-ROM, and followed the setup wizard. The CD-ROM comes with the necessary software to make the Zip 100 act like any other drive on your PC--except the Zip 100 has a 100-MB storage capacity. We set the drive up on our test machine and copying files to and from drive F was just as easy as it was on drive A or C. You can still use your printer with the Zip 100, as the external drive includes its own parallel port. Iomega recommends that you connect no more than one additional device to the Zip 100, but in our test, we "daisy chained" three peripherals--a printer connected to a scanner connected to the Zip 100 connected to our PC--without encountering any device conflicts. We used the included 1-Step Backup and 1-Step Restore utilities to back up and restore several hundred megabytes of an old Pentium's hard disk. The process was entirely intuitive and flawless but slow. We did not even approach the claimed 25-MB-per-minute performance, but that's just the way peripheral life is when you're using a parallel port. The Zip 100 is self-contained, and if you take along the parallel cable and AC power supply, it becomes portable. However, the real convenience comes from the Zip disks themselves. The disks have a tough plastic shell and come in a CD-type jewel box, so little protective precautions are required as you exchange data with Zip-owning friends. Pros
- Inexpensive
- Easy to install and use
- Portable
- Rewritable media
Cons
- Slow data-transfer rate
- Impractical for backing up more than a few hundred megabytes
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