Watcher in the back of my mind: choosing between a 1998 ZIP drive and a 2004 USB stick for a 340MB archive of town hall minutes | Ancient Tech Leftovers - Pinecone Attack
Watcher in the back of my mind: choosing between a 1998 ZIP drive and a 2004 USB stick for a 340MB archive of town hall minutes
Last week I found an old box in my attic with a 1998 Iomega ZIP drive and one 100MB disk, and I had to pick between hunting down more ZIP disks or grabbing a $7 USB stick from the drugstore to save the 340MB of town hall minutes from 1997 to 2003. I went with the USB stick because my Windows 11 tower won't even see the ZIP drive without a parallel port adapter, but the town archivist in Dayton said she'll only accept a ZIP disk since their reader is "still perfectly fine." Should I keep digging for ZIP disks at estate sales here in Ohio, or is it time to tell her the format is a dead end?
Honestly this sounds like a lot of stress over some town hall minutes, lol. If their reader works and yours doesn't, let them deal with finding the disks, that's on them not you. Formats die all the time and the archivist will figure that out eventually.