case for zip drive?
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From: Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps) on 7 Jun 2010 00:37 > One of my clients began using Zip disks for daily data > backup in 1997: six disks used in rotation, one for each > business day in the week. I tested the disks periodically to > assure safe backups, with plans to replace older disks with > new when a failure showed up. They used the same six disks > (and the same Zip drive) for ten years without a single > failure. You need the right "climate" to maintain those floppy diskettes! I guess your clients had an air-conditioned room storing the diskettes. -- @~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY. / v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you! /( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.34 ^ ^ 12:36:01 up 19 days 15:47 2 users load average: 1.10 1.09 1.07 不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA): http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa
From: VanguardLH on 7 Jun 2010 06:06 Bryce wrote: > Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps) wrote: > >> Tell your friend to transfer all data from the zip disks into DVD-R >> as soon as possible! The disks could go bad in no time! > > One of my clients began using Zip disks for daily data backup in > 1997: six disks used in rotation, one for each business day in the > week. I tested the disks periodically to assure safe backups, with > plans to replace older disks with new when a failure showed up. They > used the same six disks (and the same Zip drive) for ten years > without a single failure. Maybe he was referring to the common "click of death" that is well known for Zip diskettes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death If this user doesn't have alternate backup media (i.e., backup media of the Zip backup media), one day it'll go clickey-clickey-dead. I don't remember if the result was you had to replace the Zip drive and you could continue using the old Zip disks or if the Zip diskettes were also out of alignment so they wouldn't read in a new Zip drive. Is the sectoring on a Zip diskette done magnetically? If so, a misaligned head in a defective Zip drive could result in misaligned data on the Zip diskette which means that old Zip diskette might not be readable in a new Zip drive. Well, since the users is only using the Zip diskettes for their daily backups during the week, I suppose all they would lose is a week's worth of data. However, in business, losing that much data could be catastrophic. Large or professional companies don't use Zip diskettes for reliable backup storage so this client is some 1-person SOHO setup. I also bet they have yet to verify those backups (on whatever media they use) by actually restoring the backups to a partition on a test host (or another unused or test partition on their production host). Doing backups sounds great until the day you actually to do a restore and find out you cannot read from the backup media. The "verify" option in backup programs does NOT write any data from the backup media to a hard disk so you won't know using that option if your backup media is really usable.
From: edfair on 7 Jun 2010 23:16 The original "click of death" was referring to zip disks. When they failed there was no getting them back. It was sudden and always fatal to the data. They had their own external boxes for parallel and SCSI and internals of IDE and SCSI and possibly FD. It has been a long time since I worked with the line. I have several sitting on the shelf, external parallels, internal SCSI or IDE, all operating SFAIK. So far as putting one in a floppy or hard drive case, it may work, but be aware that they are about 1" longer than a hard drive and hard drives are longer than floppies. Width and height are the same as floppies and the bezel fills the same space as a floppy.
From: Bryce on 8 Jun 2010 09:24 VanguardLH wrote: > Bryce wrote: > >> Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps) wrote: >> >>> Tell your friend to transfer all data from the zip disks >>> into DVD-R as soon as possible! The disks could go bad >>> in no time! >> >> One of my clients began using Zip disks for daily data >> backup in 1997: six disks used in rotation, one for each >> business day in the week. I tested the disks periodically >> to assure safe backups, with plans to replace older disks >> with new when a failure showed up. They used the same six >> disks (and the same Zip drive) for ten years without a >> single failure. > > Maybe he was referring to the common "click of death" that > is well known for Zip diskettes. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death > > If this user doesn't have alternate backup media (i.e., > backup media of the Zip backup media), one day it'll go > clickey-clickey-dead. > > I don't remember if the result was you had to replace the > Zip drive and you could continue using the old Zip disks > or if the Zip diskettes were > also out of alignment so they wouldn't read in a new Zip > drive. Is the > sectoring on a Zip diskette done magnetically? If so, a > misaligned head in a defective Zip drive could result in > misaligned data on the Zip diskette which means that old > Zip diskette might not be readable in a new Zip drive. > > Well, since the users is only using the Zip diskettes for > their daily backups during the week, I suppose all they > would lose is a week's > worth of data. However, in business, losing that much > data could be > catastrophic. Large or professional companies don't use > Zip diskettes for reliable backup storage so this client > is some 1-person SOHO setup. > I also bet they have yet to verify those backups (on > whatever media > they use) by actually restoring the backups to a partition > on a test host (or another unused or test partition on > their production host). Doing backups sounds great until > the day you actually to do a restore > and find out you cannot read from the backup media. The > "verify" option in backup programs does NOT write any data > from the backup media to a hard disk so you won't know > using that option if your backup media is really usable. The client was a veterinary clinic and backups were essential to protect ongoing business. A failed disk would mean just one day's data lost since a different disk was used each business day in rotation. We never had a Zip failure, but two hard drives failed over the years and misbehavior of the very pricy accounting software gave numerous opportunities to restore from backup. It always worked. We used Fastback Plus with a wrapper program that forced the user to insert the correct disk for that day, etc. Hand-holding for the computer challenged.
From: kony on 8 Jun 2010 12:08
On Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:31:44 -0400, John McGaw <Nobody(a)Nowh.ere> wrote: >On 6/6/2010 12:50 AM, mm wrote: >> A friend has a laptop and some zip disks, and a good zipdrive in a >> broken computer. >> >> Is there an external case available that he can mount the zip drive in >> and plug it all in to the laptop with USB? >> >> I already have cases like that for 3.5 and laptop harddrives, but my >> googling for this has been unsuccessful. If I know there is such a >> thing, I'll keep looking. >> >> Thanks. > >Why not just beg/borrow/steal a working desktop computer of similar vintage >and temporarily install the ZIP drive in that? It would then be possible to >copy the contents of the ZIP disks to some other medium which is compatible >with a modern computer. I suggest similar vintage to ensure that the >system's BIOS will recognize that obsolete medium -- I don't think that any >but my oldest system would admit that ZIP drives even exist. This seems to >be the path of least resistance. Agreed, zip drives are obsolete enough now that transfer to modern storage is a good idea... nevermind the questionable reliability of using a drive that old, it may not even be functional enough now to copy over the data. However some seem to have overlooked that regardless of it being a 3.5" form factor, floppy drives have different screw spacing so picking any random 3.5" HDD external housing could require drilling new holes for the mounting screws. |