subject: Transfer Your Old Zip Disks and Floppy Disks to Your Computer [print this page] Transfer Your Old Zip Disks and Floppy Disks to Your Computer
It's no secret by now that technology evolves at an incredible pace. The computers and electronics we build today are seemingly obsolete within months. This is especially true with data storage methods and devices. In the early days of computing, in order totransfer data from one computer to another, we used what was called a floppy disk.
The first floppy was an 8-inch flexible plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide which allowed the computer to read and write data from the disk's surface. The nickname "floppy" came from the disk's flexibility. The floppy disk was considered a revolutionary device in the early days of computing for its portability which allowed users a new and easy physical means of transporting data from computer to computer.
This 8-inch floppy soon evolved into a smaller 5 1/4 inch size, which then evolved to the more common 3 1/2 inch disks, with a maximum capacity of 1.44mb. The 3 1/2 format was extremely popular well into the new millenium and you can still find them in computer retail stores today.
The rise of the 3 1/2 inch disk brought about the development of high capacity magnetic media device, as many people needed a more practical option than using 1.44mb capacity disks. To fill this emerging niche, the Zip Drive was released in 1994 by Iomega and was capable of reading and writing to specialized disks called Zip Disks with a capacity of 100mb. Zip disks were very popular, but they never replaced the 3 1/2 format. Eventually Zip Drives were phased out in favor of cheaper, higher capacity media such as CD-R and flash thumb drives.
If you examine your own "digital-history" you may remember having some of these disks laying around, and may even remember copying important photos or documents onto them. Although the technology is basically obsolete, we have the tools and experience to extract data off of these devices, and put them right back onto your computer. If you do have important data, it's a wise move totransfer your Zip Disk to your computer or other modern storage medium.
