The Iomega Zip drive is another storage option. The drive captured the early share of the high-capacity storage market. It came out years before the CD recorder. Zip disks hold as much as 100 or 250 Mb, depending on the model. The SuperDisk drive, introduced a year ago, holds as much as 120 Mb on one disk and can read standard floppies, too.
Most people simply slide out their floppy drive and replace it with the new drive.
Although the drive has yet to gain widespread acceptance, Roach expects it to replace the standard floppy drive in a few years. For backing up an entire system that can span several gigabytes in one shot, customers should consider the Iomega Jaz drive, which stores as much as one or two gigabytes but costs much more than a Zip drive, Roach said. No matter what backup hardware people use, they must check the backup files to make sure the backup hardware is working, said Dan Buda of the Central Iowa Computer Users Group. Otherwise, the user could be in for a nasty surprise. When his computer failed, he found out his backup was not working.