The Iomega Zip 250 in 2026

Recently, I wrote about getting a floppy drive up and running in order to get some data from an old 3.5" disk and lamented how difficult this was at the present time.

Well, this time around, I am doing the same thing, but for an Iomega Zip 250. I have a bunch of Zip disks that have data on them that need to be archived as well as some zip disks I used myself around 20 years ago. 

Zip drives were an interesting phenomenon that occurred during the late 90's and early 00's. They came at a time when we didn't have USB drives and high storage portable drives didn't exist. The only choice for storing large amounts of data at that time were on CD-R or CD-RW. Other than that, we we restricted to the 3.5" floppy and its 1.44MB of storage. 

And these were limitations the peripheral industry were keen to break through at the time. One of the ways that these limitations were challenged was through the introduction of "superfloppy" drives. A number of different companies released their own take on the super floppy concept and the Zip series was Iomega's contribution to computing history. And it was a pretty significant one, a lot of people who used computers back in the late 90's and early 00's will probably remember the bright blue devices, which is probably one of the reasons the colour was chosen. When I was looking up information on the devices for this article, I also discovered that the format saw a lot of support in the music industry, with many devices supporting them as a storage medium. The brand was so successful that it was even co opted for the Clik! drive, which was branded as a Pocket Zip at some point. I have actually had a Clik! drive for years, and have never used it due to its interface. If I ever manage to get something that could let me get it up and running, then it would definitely be an obsolete media I would describe...

I have no idea how to get this working...

Unlike a lot of its contemporary's, the Zip drive itself was often sold as a portable solution, if you considered a cable, separate power supply and drive to be portable by todays standards... But back then, this was entirely something you could move around easily. When I think back to the time this device was first introduced, I remember seeing the parallel port version than anything else. In fact, when I first saw an internal drive fitted to a PC, I was surprised.

a typical Zip disk

But, given that portability and compatibility was one of this products selling points, there were many different connectivity options ranging from IDE to FireWire.

There are three versions of the Zip drive, the 100, 250 and 750. The numbers refer to the storage capacity they supported which ranged from 100MB to 750MB, with each iteration of disk being roughly the same size as a regular 3.5" floppy. Each new generation could read from the previous iterations media, but could not write back to them. In fact, the 100 model has a rather interesting mechanism for detecting licensed media that seems to use optical sensors.

the optical device used for detecting media

As I didn't have a drive any more, I had to resort to eBay in order to get started. I was able to get a hold of what was described as an internal version with a USB connection. It was dirt cheap, however when it arrived the drive itself was almost pancaked - the seller had decided to wrap one, thin layer of bubble wrap around it. This required me to repair the bezel by gluing it back together and bending the metal part of the case back into shape.

bezel is worn, but it is hard to see that it was smashed

Also, the USB connection was a bit of a white lie. It was an IDE to USB converter from an old external USB hard drive enclosure, specifically a Freecom device. Sadly, the interface didn't work even when powered up and connected.

It turned out what I had actually bought was an internal ATAPI model, which I didn't think was going to be much of a problem - until I started to search for an IDE to USB connection.

the interface formerly known as EIDE

After searching high and low for one, I took inspiration from my eBay seller - who actually refunded my purchase after I told them about the delivery issue, which was very nice of them. I started looking for an external IDE hard drive to USB enclosure, even these are not easy to find these days. Once I had my hands on one, I just gutted it for the interface and hooked it up to the drive.

the loom running to the front is a power switch

With the interface connected and powered on, nothing actually happened. It was only when I inserted a disk did the drive appear in Explorer, and even then it didn't appear as a Zip Drive. Instead, it appeared as a removeable drive.

This is probably down to the fact that I used an interface from an external HDD enclosure. Or maybe it is because there are no Windows 11 drivers? Not sure, but what we have is a working Zip Drive that will read 100MB disks and read/write 250MB disks over USB 1.1 connection.

But, and this could be a significant but, if you have any old Zip disks that you would like to use again that have been write protected, then you wont be able to undo this.

This is because the Iomega software simply doesnt work on Windows 11. You might be able to install it, but for me it didn't happen. And the reason for this? The software, IomegaWare, doesnt support 64bit operating systems, you will need to use a 32bit operating system to get this done. Specifically, it is due to an incompatibility with version.dll across 32 and 64bit platforms, one that wont be fixed. So this means trying to install it in compatibility mode on a 64bit operating system will not work.

It isnt just this software that is effected, there is a lot of 32bit software that suffers as a result of this incompatibility, which some might call a bug.

In order to access these disks, you are going to have to jump through some hoops. So lets describe the problem first:

You need to use the Iomega software in order to remove the write protection on your disks, but it wont work on your OS. So, you need an OS that the software works on, you either want to use Windows XP or Windows 7. Compatibility mode wont work - you need to be using one of those environments.

I didn't include Vista, because I really didn't enjoy Vista.

Maybe you have an old machine that you can install Windows XP or 7 on. If you do, then go ahead and get it done and start reading your disks. But, the chances are that you dont have a spare machine that you can do that on that has the relevant connections. If you are doing the same thing as me, then you can get away with a USB connection and an old machine, but we are talking about machines that need to boot using BIOS, not UEFI.

So the next best thing you could do is to create a virtual machine running one of these operating systems, and install the software there. That way, you can pass your Zip drive over to the virtual machine as a peripheral device and work with it that way.

There are a few things to consider here - you cant use Hyper V, which is annoying as you may very well have this available to you. Hyper V doesnt allow you to use USB ports on its virtual machines. So you will need to use another hypervisor like VMWare or Virtual Box. You are also going to need to have a Windows XP or Windows 7 installation disc or ISO.

I am going to assume that the reader has some basic knowledge on how virtualisation works and how to create a virtual machine. So I am just going to go over the steps here quickly, to do this I will be using Virtual Box. This is a free virtualisation solution from Oracle, it is by far from the best one out there - but it is free and will do what we need it to do.

As mentioned above, you are going to need a Windows XP installation and a license code. The best form of installer is an iso, if you have one, or a CD/DVD ROM. For people not used to virtualisation, you are going to need to bear in mind that your virtual machine is going to share resources with your host machine - the machine running your virtual machine. So you might need to be frugal with your allocation of RAM and disk space. Windows XP is going to need at least 4GB of RAM and 64GB of disk space for what is going to be tried out here.

Once you have downloaded and installed Virtual Box, open the application and click on the New icon in the top left corner. This will open the New Virtual Machine window, this is where you can configure all of the relevant parts of your virtual machine. Dont worry if you make a mistake here, you can always come back and change the configuration at any time. Here is a list of the fields, what they mean and how you can use them:

Under Virtual machine name and operating system:

• VM Name: This is just the name of the virtual machine. Here I just used "Obsolete Media"
• VM Folder: This is the path where the virtual machines files will be saved. These will take up quite a lot of space. If you configure a 128GB disk for your virtual machine, then its files will be at least 128GB in size, so you need to make sure that your disk has enough space. I have a specific location for virtual machines on my dev box
• ISO Image: This is the file you will use for installing Windows. Select it here, it is only going to be used once when creating the machine.
• Proceed with Unattended Installation: Tick this to have an almost silent installation.

Under Set up unattended guest OS installation:

• Username: This is the name of the account the setup will create for you, I changed this to user.
• Password: This is the password for the account you are creating.
• Product Key: Enter your Windows 7 license key here.
• Install Guest Additions: This will install all of the enhancements available for Windows XP under Virtual Box. I recommend choosing this option.

Under Specify virtual hardware:

• Base Memory: This is where you set the amount of RAM your virtual machine will use. I recommend setting this to 4GB, if you can spare it.
• Number of CPU's: You can set the number of CPU's your virtual machine will use. You wont need more than one, but if you can spare an extra core, feel free to give it an extra CPU.
• Use EFI: This tells the virtual machine to boot using UEFI. This is better left unticked for this type of installation. When unticked, the virtual machine will use BIOS during the boot process.
• Under Create a New Virtual Hard Disk:
• Disk Size: You can use the slider or the text box to set the disk size here, you can leave it at the recommended setting, but I advise setting this at 64GB if you can spare the disk space.
• Hard Disk File Type and Format: You can use this to make your virtual machine compatible with other hypervisors. Leave this at its default.
• Pre-allocate full size: Ticking this will cause Virtual Box to bump the virtual hard disk file size up to its maximum amount. So, if you have a 64GB disk, a 64GB file will be created. Unticked, the disk file will increase as your virtual machine will expand the file as you store more data on it.
• Split Disks into 2GB Parts. This will cause the hard disk file to be split across multiple 2GB files.
• Use an Existing Virtual Hard Disk File: This allows you to attach a pre existing virtual disk file to your virtual machine. This is how you can move virtual machines across hypervisors.
• Create a Virtual Machine Without a Virtual Hard Disk: This allows you to exactly that, create a diskless VM.

With all of your config set, just click on finish. This will cause your virtual machine to power on and the Windows installation process should start automatically. This will take a little while, despite the speed of your machine. My dev box is an i9 with 64GB of RAM, but it takes almost an hour to install Windows XP on Virtual Box. HyperV  takes minutes...

Whilst that takes place, you can go ahead and download the Iomega software and drivers for the Zip drive, which have been handily preserved on the Internet Archive here. It is an iso, so you are going to need to extract the contents before you can use it on your Windows 7 virtual machine. You can do this by simply opening it under Windows 11 and copying all of the files to a location on the Windows XP virtual machine.

I moved the files over using my network - however, older operating systems like Windows XP dont support file sharing services used by Windows 11 etc. To do this, you will need to turn on SMB 1.0 file sharing on your host machine. You can turn this feature on by going to System -> Optional Features -> More Windows Features and selecting SMB1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support. This will force a restart, but once you are back, you will be able to share a folder with your Windows XP virtual machine.

The file that kicks everything off is called setup, and it launches a wonderfully old fashioned installation process. There is nothing about the process that is particularly tricky, it is basically an extended EULA agreement, however at the end you will be asked if you want to shut the machine down, the best thing to do here is to say yes. This is effectively the end of the installation process, all that remains to be done is to connect the device and start the virtual machine up - wait until the drive has finished installing on the host machine first, this will be the first indicator that something can be wrong.

If you encounter any issues during the installation, or you dont get the screen asking you to shutdown the machine, or you get an error mentioning GetFileVersionInfoSizeA, then you are likely running a 64bit version of Windows.

Once your host machine has finished off installing the drive, you can now pass the device over to your virtual machine. You can do this from the window the virtual machine is running in by going up to devices and then USB. Here, you will see all of the USB devices currently connected to your host machine. If you are not sure which one is the one you want to pass over, disconnect it and see which one disappears from the list - this is the device you want. Just click on the device to pass it over to your virtual machine, as soon as you do the operating system will start to install it.

If you dont encounter any errors, then you are in for a very anti-climatic finish. IomegaWare doesnt install a front end, just a set of shell extensions that can be used on Iomega drives. Once Windows has detected and installed your drive, you should be able to right click it and see the tools that IomegaWare provides. Specifically the most useful one - Protect.

This is the tool that provides the protection layer through software. With the suspect disk in the drive, right click the drive and select Protect. From here you will be able to remove all of the write protection from the drive itself and then format it.

the fruits of my labour

However, if you are following along with this and you have a disk that is not protected, but keeps asking to be formatted - then that disk is probably dead. I had one disk out of 20 that displayed this behaviour. If that is the disk you wanted to get data from, dont throw it away. This is probably as far as I am going with this drive on Windows, but when I was browsing the files on the IomegaWare install disk, I discovered a folder that contained Linux drivers.

So it may be the case that when using a 32bit Linux, I may be able to resurrect my dead disk - or even use some recovery software on it to see if there was anything interesting on it at some point. It is definitely something that warrants a little investigation.

And thus concludes the rather convoluted tale of how I got another obsolete medium working on modern hardware in order to get some files I created 24 years ago.

Was it the best way to do it? Probably yes, I think? It was one of the cheapest ways of getting a drive, which turned out to be essentially free in the end. was my connectivity choice correct? Well, I could have held out looking for an external USB model, but then I would have ended up paying out way too much than I would have liked. The external USB enclosure I bought for this, even when added on to the cost of the Zip drive wouldn't have been close to an external USB model. This wasnt a particularly tricky way to connect a drive to a machine, but in its present state, it is something you would only use when you needed it, like the floppy drive, it requires an external encloser. That or to be installed in a case, but what cases come with external drive bays these days?

I think they key part of this work was getting the software installed and working. Getting old disks unprotected and formatted is without a doubt the most useful thing I have been able to demonstrate here. It opens up possibilities for anyone using retro kit that employs these disks and drives and isnt that hard to do - the trickiest part is getting the virtual machine up and running with the software. So even if I had chosen to get one of the external models, the same amount of effort would have been required.

The next thing I will be looking at is another super floppy, in the form of an LS-120 - and I will definitely take a look and see what it would take to get that Clik! drive running...

Floppy Disk Drives in 2026

Recently, I have needed to get some data from a set of old 3.5" floppy disks - and I learned that getting this done easily in 2026 is no mean feat.

I naively thought that something as ubiquitous as the humble floppy drive would never become abandoned technology and assumed that I could hook one of the many drives I have up to at least one of my machines. This wasnt the case, not one of my machines had the relevant connector that would allow me to connect a floppy drive.

This shouldn't have been a big deal, I thought to myself, I can just get a external USB floppy and use that. However getting one that works under Windows 11 wasnt so easy. I ended up getting an Iomega 3.5" floppy and memory card reader combo device which would work if I used a specific driver - but getting it to work consistently was an issue.

OK, that was a bust, so how about a 3.5" to USB converter? They turned out even harder to find, however there is one solution that is quite readily available. It requires a bit of work to get it going, it isnt for the faint of heart, and there are probably far better solutions - but this is the rabbit hole I ended up going down.

It is essentially a two part 3.5" to USB converter that is connected by a 26 pin ribbon cable. Typically, you will not see both parts sold together, so many people will pass this by as they wont see how to use it. In fact, the only other source of information I found about these was another blog post that lamented the connectivity.

Another thing that will make people pass on this is the fact that the USB connection is not readily obvious. It doesnt use a standard connector, so you will need to source the correct connector type and crimps before you can even think about hooking it up.

In fact, if you are on this blog right now, it may very well be that you have these devices and want to know how I got them working, or you are researching about how they work before you go ahead and buy them for yourself.

This is how I got them up and running for me to get a simple 3.5" floppy drive connected.

The drive I am working with is a simple Sony MPF-920, which seems to have a date code from April 2006. I dont remember where it came from, but I know it was tested and working.

A suitably old floppy drive

The next part to look at is the USB connection. The board is marked as a UF001F, if you run that through Google you will get loads of hits, however the cheapest prices will nearly always be on AliExpress, an example can be found here.

Note the non-standard USB connection on the left

It is important to note where pin 1 is on this board as it is not clearly marked. It is the pin nearest the USB connection.

I got this information from the Electronics and Repair blog who posted an article about this device. 

As I mentioned above, they seem to be the only other place on the Internet that has posted any relevant information about any of these devices. Not only do they identify pin one on UF001F, they also describe a complete pinout for that board.

Please go over there and take a look at their articles, they publish some really interesting things.

The next part is the 3.5" interface. This plugs directly into the floppy drive interface and exposes a 26 pin ribbon connector and a standard floppy drive power connector. This is because the completed setup will attempt to supply power to the floppy drive via the USB connection. This isnt required, however, if you are supplying a separate source of power, for instance from an ATX power source.

This board is marked as an ELS@26-34, searching for this will again bring a large number of results and prices, but the cheapest are once more to be found on AliExpress and sites like that. An example of one can be found here.

Pin 1 is clearly marked on my board as can be seen. It doesnt seem to be different on the other boards I have seen for sale so far.

All you need to connect the two parts of this adapter together is a 26 pin FPC ribbon connector with a 1.0mm pitch. Getting a longer one may be better than a shorter one, you can get bags of these from Amazon for a few pounds, the ones I got were here. Comically, they were packed in a veggy bag from the supermarket and then sealed in a cardboard box...

all those alphanumerics mean 26 pin, 1.0mm pitch...

As I have kept eluding to, the USB connectors on these boards are kind of none standard. If you have spent any time inside a laptop, then you will recognise them straight away, but probably be unable to put a name to them. Plus, you still have to attach a standard USB connection.

I found the correct connectors on DigiKey, and purchased some pre-crimped leads along with them - I hate crimping at the best of times and had no patience in my life to crimp anything this small. The connections are clearly marked on the UF001F for USB, so doing this part of the hook up is relatively easy. I ordered the longest pre-crimped cables they had in stock, they are crimped on both ends, so cutting them in half doubles the amount of leads I have to work with.

Be carful when stripping wire that gets as thin as this, you might end up just cutting straight through it, ahem...

The connector type itself is a JST ZH series connector, specifically a four pin connector.

To make the other end of the USB connection easy, I bought some USB ports from Amazon that have all of the connections marked. Then I simple connected my new lead to these connections - this now means all I have to do is hook it up with a USB to USB micro lead to use it.

these are 5 pin micro USB ports

You need to get either 4 or 5 pin versions of these ports - dont confuse them with the far cheaper power only ports that wont work for this build. As you will see from the image above, I have actually obtained the 5 pin type, the fifth pin is badly identified on these boards, but it should be labelled as ID. This port is used to switch the connection from host to peripheral.

A quick explanation on this; the easiest way to explain what a host connection is would be to compare it to your computer. When you insert a USB device, the computer controls how it is used. This is a host connection.

Whereas when you plug a USB drive into a computer, the drive is not in control of the connection or interaction. This is a peripheral connection.

I dont need a host connection at all, I want the finished device to be on a peripheral connection.

To achieve this, I do absolutely nothing. When the ID pin is kept open, it means the USB connection should be in peripheral mode. 

Grounding this this pin would put the USB connection into host mode. Whilst inapplicable for a floppy drive, it would be useful if this was on a phone and a USB drive connected. This would allow you to browse the contents of the drive.

However, I just dont need a host connection. This is just going to be a regular USB device that I attach when needed, so I am leaving this pin open to configure it as a peripheral device.

If you want to know more about USB and its technical specifications etc, then the very best place to start is Wikipedia. It gives a good explanation for people who dont know much about it beyond using it and contains all the links to take you on to the technical documentation. But for this build, we dont need to go into any further detail.

an ugly, but functional USB lead with a background of messy desk

With all the parts of the device connected and with the appropriate interface attached so we can hook it up to a host device. But before we do that, I need to carry out some basic tests. Firstly, I need to check that the USB interface is hooked up correctly to the USB port. With the ribbon cable removed from this part of the device, I can attach this to my computer and check to see if the interface is detected and installed.

the entire thing connected

Windows should detect the connection and install the hardware it has just seen. Next, I need to disconnect from the computer and reassemble the entire device - this is the point at which we test the finished build.

Windows should detect the floppy drive after a short delay - if you have been following this article along and your floppy drive doesnt appear in Explorer, just pop in a disk. The drive should start reading the disk straight away and appear in Explorer.

If you go and check in Device Manager, you can confirm two things; that a a USB floppy controller and a floppy drive itself has been installed:

you should see a USB floppy controller installed

It seems to show up as a TEAC drive regardless of the drive you are actually installing.

you should also see a floppy drive installed

One odd behaviour I noticed here once everything was connected up is that the drive activity light was on all of the time, even when there was no disk in the drive.

Also, the drive really complained when trying to read a disk. This could be down to a number of different things, I went through an entire box of disks when testing this drive. It could read all of them apart from one, which I know was used up until quite recently. So it could be down to the media itself, also a large number of these disks could have been formatted for other systems, and Windows 11 doesnt seem to be able to trigger an error. However, it read a disk that was formatted on Windows XP and last used in the late 00's read fine.

So this could be down to a file system issue?

There is the fact that the interface itself identifies itself as being made by TEAC, the drive itself is made by Sony - so there could be a compatibility issue in play here. That is something I can test by getting hold of a TEAC drive, which I think I might have..

But, if the drive doesnt not spin up when you insert a disk it means you have one of a number of problems:

• Your drive doesnt work. See if you can test it out in another machine, if at all possible. I know that if you are reading this then that might be harder than it sounds...
• You have reversed the connections with the ribbon cable. This could potentially damage the drive and the 3.5" interface so it makes a lot of sense to ensure you get the right pins connected.
• Your USB connection isnt working. Change the USB lead if it is inconsistent, then check the solder joints on the USB port. Also, check the cables on the USB connector on the USB interface.
• This actually happened to me when I was testing my connection. My USB 2.0 ports didn't work with this device. It only started working on my USB 3.0 ports on that machine.
• You are not supplying enough power to the floppy drive. The power for the drive is supplied by the USB connection. Depending on what you are connecting to, you may not be getting enough power over the connection to allow the drive to function. To resolve this, provide a separate power supply, it only requires 5 volts.

And fantastically, I have a working USB to floppy interface. And even this was easier than getting an IDE to USB interface working... Obviously with some caveats...

Finishing up, there are some considerations that need to be noted about what I have done here. Firstly, this is a long string of devices held together with different connectors. It isnt something that I can just have out on the desk forever, it would just get damaged.

This is a build that will require some sort of enclosure to hold it for the long term, and one that has enough space to have all of the components used above to fit in. If you have experience with 3D printing, then it shouldn't be hard for you to knock one out pretty quickly. Or, you could repurpose another enclosure to serve as its home. But, bear in mind that you may need to provide a supplementary power supply.

And that leads me on to the second issue - power. If you are planning on running this from a USB hub, then you may find out that you simply dont have enough power going to the device. The drive I am using states it requires 5 volts DC and 950 mA, that is not a small amount of power when we are talking about USB. 

You may want to consider making your own 5 volt power supply, or consider using an ITX power supply. If you are feeling even more ambitious with your build, why not an ATX power supply? The choice is yours, all you need to do is source some floppy drive Molex connectors. Whatever you choose to do, make sure it is the safest choice, please dont go trying to make your own wall charger or anything like that. 

Personally, I think using something like an ITX power supply is one of the best ways to go. They are small, safe and they provide all of the connections you need.

Lastly, this is a basic floppy solution. It may not provide the full functionality of a floppy host controller that you would normally find on a motherboard. It struggles to read disks that shouldn't be giving it issues. If you are a technician, then this isnt the solution for you, there are better solutions out there which I will be taking a look at in the very near future. If you are looking for a simple USB floppy solution, then this isnt for you either. It is fiddly, requires some basic soldering skills and needs you to get components from multiple sources.

I could only really recommend this to someone who is investigating the idea of building their own USB floppy drive and wanted to understand (some of) the capabilities of the components they are using. Or perhaps someone who is interested in adding a floppy drive to a single board computer like the Raspberry Pi.

Something tells me that this wont be the last time I take a look at floppy drives... When I was researching the potential solutions for this, there are a plethora of even more technical solutions that would have taken me even further down the rabbit hole - there are even alternate solutions to the humble floppy drive itself.

However the next thing I will be looking at is a similar issue with the legendary Zip drive from Iomega. I have a similar problem to solve there - going from an older interface to USB.

But - did I manage to get the data from the disk I was working on? The answer is yes, I did. Plus a lot more from the disks I used for testing. None were labelled, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found some Acorn software on them :)