hello,

zip-drives where great - at least compared to what other possibilities where around these days:

overall, zip-drives where not that expensive, especially the medias.

but they died every now& then ...

so it was more or less only a possibility to transfer data, not so much to archive it! this was what cd-r and later dvd-r where there for :)

imho. the "real" problem where often the drives themselfs, they where available with various interfaces, the most common was (!) parallel / "printer-port" / centronics (!) .. veeery slow.

the "best" ones had scsi =?> fast etc. but you needed an scsi-controller with an external connector for that

if i remember it correctly, there where even IDE/PATA-drives available - but i think only internal ones - and later usb-variants (also slow) ...

btw. what where the alternative in the late 1990ties!?

* syquests

great drives, especially the 5.25 inch variants, but they where already "dated" by then. and the 3.5 inch variants where pretty expensive and had reliability-issues ...

additionally: lots of people mistook the 3,5 inch variants for floppy-disk-drives and ruined early models by inserting floppies into them =?> the later got some mechanical protection against that!

* (old) harddisks

my "medium of choice" where old hdds, which i plugged into the machines between which i wanted to transfer data ...

by far the "best" option, but also the most "technical" one ;)

just my 0.02€