Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#31

Post by TipsForCanoes » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:01 PM UTC

> Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

This is such an odd take to me.

I sold and supported computers in the 1990s. Outside of a few industries, such as desktop publishing, Zip was not popular. The vast majority of computer owners never owned a Zip drive, unlike a floppy or soon to be CDROM.

In fact, I sold far more QIC-80 tape drives for backups than Zip drives.

Zip also didn't vanish overnight, it simple never caught on with most people. However, in the industries that used them, they hung on for a while.

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#32

Post by swiftcoder » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:02 PM UTC

Zip drives were very cool, and even cooler, my folks owned a Powerbook G3 at the time, which allowed hot swapping a Zip drive into the expansion bay (in place of floppy/CD/battery)

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#33

Post by michaelbuckbee » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

bananaflag wrote: post #3

There was also the issue that one would also need a reader. Why would I buy a zip reader if no one else has one (network effect)? (Btw I never saw in my life a zip reader or a zip disk.) Whereas with USB sticks all one needed was a USB port. I immediately wanted a stick.

Partially this was solved by the ZipDrive being designed for portability as well (I'm not even sure if there was ever a built in model). So if you needed to copy a large file and take it to a friends house you just took the drive with you.

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#34

Post by forinti » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

I bought one of these. In those days, I could keep the JDK in a box of floppies or it could fit in one Zip. Unfortunately, you had to carry your drive with you, because few people had one. So it only really made sense as backup media for me.

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#35

Post by voxadam » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:07 PM UTC

inatreecrown2 wrote: post #6

I used a Zip drive with an Akai MPC 2000 over SCSI to store all my songs and sounds. Loved it! Never had a problem with it, and I didn't exactly look after it well. The MPC itself still had the builtin floppy drive, and the zip just blew the floppy away in speed and capacity.

That me reminds me of installing a SCSI Zip drive into my roommate's Akai S5000 or S6000 sampler. He and I repeatedly debated whether or not hardware samplers would eventually lose out to software solutions. He was absolutely convinced that there was no way in hell that the precision of hardware solutions would ever lose out to the flexibility of software. In the end, I was right, I'm pretty sure the S5000 and S6000 were some of the last truly hardware samplers of the era. Still, that Akai was a sexy bit of kit back then. As sure as I was that software would eventually win out it was sad to see the amazing engineering and precision of the hardware that was finally overtaken.

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#36

Post by sublinear » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #29

sublinear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it really the iMac that did it? I don't think I remember anyone saying that until recent years. Around the time of the first iMac, just about every home PC already had a pair of USB 1.1 ports because of Windows 98 and a lot more plug and play support. What I recall being sold for Mac were FireWire peripherals back in the late 90s and most of the 2000s. By 2000, USB 2.0 was too good to ignore and addressed all the…

The iMac certainly accelerated the adoption curve. There were USB ports on other PCs, but since they also had normal (at the time) ports, no PC users were going out and buying all-new USB peripherals. Apple's decision to leave out all the other ports meant that a bunch of folks were forced to buy new USB peripherals (and/or adapters), and gave peripheral manufacturers a dedicated market for USB

I'm not really convinced.

It seems that even Apple quickly caved in and put FireWire on the G3 iMac when they updated the design to a slot loader in 1999.

I don't have anything against Apple, but USB before the 2000s was pretty bad. It seems weird that people are now thinking otherwise.

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#37

Post by harel » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

Zip drives were great while they were great. I had one and it was amazing at the time. What was even more amazing, is that Toshiba Libretto in the photo. I wanted one since the first time I saw it, and into the early 2000 as a linux/retro machine and never got one. And even though today that form factor is not that special... Still...

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#38

Post by fractallyte » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #28

Speaking of backup solutions, why don't we ever see pro-sumer priced tape drives? The technology behind capable LTO drives is now more than 10 years old, shouldn't we see some reductions in price now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open

VHS video cassettes could be used as tape drives!

There was this, from the same era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArVid

And I have this for my Amiga, also same era: http://www.hugolyppens.com/VBS.html

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#39

Post by dtech » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

forinti wrote: post #34

I bought one of these. In those days, I could keep the JDK in a box of floppies or it could fit in one Zip. Unfortunately, you had to carry your drive with you, because few people had one. So it only really made sense as backup media for me.

It was probably very localized, where my parent worked in the late 90s every office room had at least one, so my parents also bought one for home so they could easily transfer files.

It almost dissapeares overnight once 32MB+ usb drives became common, much more convenenient.

Re: Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

#40

Post by arvid-lind » Sun, Apr 19, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

I remember really wanting one of these but I'm not really sure for what purpose. The idea of a substantial amount of data off a HDD seemed very appealing, and it was around that time where 1.44mb floppies were no longer sufficient but most people didn't have a CD-RW drive yet. Later in the 90s as CD-RW drives replaced CD-ROM drives there wasn't really a need for Zip drives.

So it seems like to me they had an extremely short window to operate without much competition. CD-Rs being about $15 for a spindle and 6.5x the space was an easy pick.