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

At a glance:

• Zip drives, introduced by Iomega in 1994, offered 100MB of storage — a massive leap over 1.44MB floppy disks.
• Despite early success and adoption by major PC makers, the "click of death" reliability issue and the rise of CDs and USB drives led to its rapid decline.
• Iomega tried to pivot with ZipCD and PocketZip, but the company was eventually sold to EMC in 2008 and the brand vanished.

The dawn of the Zip drive

In the early to mid-90s, portable storage was mostly defined by the standard three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk, which even a "young'un" had experience with. This format had significant downsides: a mere capacity of 1.44MB, which would soon become too small for increasingly large software, and a fragile nature. While "superfloppy" formats existed, they were physically larger and unwieldy for portable use. Enter 1994, when Iomega introduced its variant of a "superfloppy", the Zip drive. Zip disks were only slightly larger than a typical floppy, yet the initial capacity reached a whopping 100MB — a huge number compared to the traditional floppy. Zip drives also offered major performance benefits, with read speeds averaging 1.4MB/s, as opposed to the 16kB/s of a floppy, and a seek time of around 28ms, compared to a floppy's 200ms. Though not as fast as desktop HDDs, this was a huge step forward for portable storage.

With such innovations, Zip drives became the most popular "superfloppy" format. They were also very affordable: a Zip drive initially sold for $200 including a 100MB disk, and each additional disk cost $20. This made high capacities attainable, especially considering that a desktop hard drive often cost $200 for only 500MB. The appeal led to adoption by major computer manufacturers; Dell included Zip drives in some PCs, and Apple included them in Power Macintosh models from the mid-to-late 90s.

The rise and fall: a brief success

Zip drives continued to evolve relatively quickly. In 1998, Iomega introduced the Zip 250 disks, increasing capacity to 250MB, and by the new millennium, the Zip 750 pushed that to 750MB. However, the late 1990s saw a shift as other portable formats rose to prominence. CDs, which could store around 700MB of data, were far cheaper to produce, making them appealing for both consumers and software distribution companies. Then came USB flash drives, which were smaller and offered faster speeds. USB 1.1 generally matched Zip drive speeds, but USB 2.0 appeared in 2002 and increased speeds by a factor of 20. Magnetic drives like Zip disks simply couldn't compete with the convenience and performance of USB drives.

The competition was fierce, and despite the Zip drive's initial lead, it was quickly overshadowed. The format's evolution couldn't keep pace with the rapid advancements in storage technology. By the early 2000s, USB flash drives had become the dominant portable storage solution, rendering Zip drives obsolete for most users. The once-promising storage revolution had run its course.

The fatal flaw: the "click of death"

Despite early success, Zip drives had a major drawback: reliability issues. Many users experienced drives that would simply fail, unrelated to age or misuse. This phenomenon became known as the "click of death," and once it happened, the drive was gone. Iomega estimated the problem affected around 0.5% of Zip drives, but with thousands sold, this became widespread. The issue was significant enough that a class action lawsuit was filed against Iomega in September 1998. While some complaints were dismissed, others were not, and the public's awareness of the problems severely damaged the brand's reputation.

The timing couldn't have been worse. As Zip drives faced reliability concerns, CDs and USB drives were gaining popularity. CDs offered higher capacity and lower production costs, while USB drives provided superior speed and portability. The "click of death" became synonymous with Zip drives, and even though Iomega tried to address the issue, the damage was done. The combination of technical flaws and the rise of better alternatives sealed the Zip drive's fate.

The legacy and beyond

During its time, the Zip drive left a legacy. It was widely adopted, with drives available in various interfaces (internal and external). Remarkably, some aviation companies continued using Zip drives as late as 2014 to distribute updates for navigation databases. This long-term use in critical industries highlights the Zip drive's initial robustness and the lack of alternatives in specific niches.

Iomega also attempted to leverage the Zip brand name beyond the original product. The company introduced ZipCD drives, which were CD drives bearing the Zip name despite no technological relation. There was also PocketZip, initially called Clik!, a smaller floppy disk format introduced in 1999 for portable devices like MP3 players. However, PocketZip was even shorter-lived than Zip drives. By the mid-2000s, Iomega's profits plummeted, leading to its sale to EMC in 2008. In 2013, EMC and Lenovo formed a joint venture that took over Iomega's business and removed the Iomega branding. It was a dramatic fall for a company that had invented innovative products, including the Zip drive and the earlier Bernoulli Box, but the Zip drive's reliability issues ultimately contributed to the company's decline.