Bit of a long shot, but does anyone remember external Iomega Zip drives? I have a box full of zip disks, but no working zip drive to copy over the data. There's one on ebay (a 250 model, USB), but the seller used it on his PC and doesn't know if it will work on a Mac. Am I right in thinking that the zip drives themselves were multi-platform, and only the disks themselves (and/or driver software) were platform specific? Also, will a modern Mac even recognize a USB connected zip drive? (I have SL on my main Mac, but also an older Mac running Panther).

'I have a box full of zip disks, but no working zip drive to copy over the data. There's one on ebay (a 250 model, USB), but the seller used it on his PC and doesn't know if it will work on a Mac.' If the ZIP disks you have are 'ZIP 100's', you probably should avoid the '250' drives.

I never owned one, but heard they were very slow at reading ZIP 100 disks. You should keep looking for a ZIP 100 USB drive. I don't believe it makes any difference whether it was used with a Mac or a PC. No 'internal differences' between them. As to getting ZIP disks to mount on the desktop once you have the drive, that might be touch-and-go. Seems to me that OS X, at least in its earlier versions, had drivers that would automatically recognize and mount ZIP disks. I'm not so sure if the latest versions of the system software still have those drivers.

ZIP disks also have an 'on-disk' driver. It works like this: - Power down computer and ZIP drive - Apply power to ZIP drive ONLY, insert a disk - Turn on Mac - When the Mac boots, it will automatically 'scan the buses' (including the USB bus), and will seek out and load any device drivers for external volumes that it finds. It will scan and 'find' the Iomega on-disk driver and load it. Now, when you get to the finder, the Iomega driver already loaded and the ZIP disk mounts on the desktop. You can now eject a disk (drag it to the trash), and the driver will stay loaded, so you can insert a second disk, etc. The on-disk driver will remain loaded until the next shutdown or restart. You might try Iomega's software site to see if they had an OS X compatible version of their 'ZIP Tools' utility.

Iomega Zip 250 Driver For Mac

I still have a ZIP 100 SCSI sitting here on the desk next to my g4. I haven't used it in a while, but it worked the last time I tried it with OS 10.3.9. Back when they were introduced, the ZIP drive seemed to offer a HUGE amount of storage space. How times have changed! Click to expand.It ain't all that.

The ZIP 100 discs should work fine in the ZIP 250 drive. I never had a problem with them in mine. As for this business about the on-disc drivers, I am not so sure.

FAT-formatted discs certainly don't have Mac drivers. Yet, FAT-formatted ZIP discs work just fine on my Macs. Let us all agree to cut the FUD. The OP is looking to buy a ZIP 250 USB external drive. I own such a drive. My only concern is that the eBay special is not guaranteed to be the same model as mine. However, it probably is.

Iomega Drivers For Mac

I just want to OP to be sure.