So, I got this. But I also know these things aren’t the most reliable and I am really paranoid about breaking it, and there’s some suspicious things.

First, it feels cheap, especially the USB port on the back feels like it wants to break off.

Second, and quite worrying, when I first got it, it was clicking and not reading disks. Slower when I held it with the opening towards the top, faster with opening towards bottom. I thought it was dead, when eventually after a few retries it started working. Now, this was faster clicking, especially fast shortly before it started working, so perhaps it was just stuck.
On the other hand, I found this: https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq2.htm

Most users who have lost their crucial data tell the same sad story of hearing “those clicks” some time ago “but then they went away and everything seemed okay for a while.”

Now, 2 of the disks also had some smaller issues. One had trouble loading. Formatting it seems to have fixed the issue. Maybe. I used fdisk so it left out the first 1MB.
The second loads fine, but doesn’t seem to like writing. It seems to do it in bursts, and it is audible. There’s also 2 sections where it produces a buzz, both on read and write.
Here’s an audio sample from continuous (one file) write to that disk:

https://files.catbox.moe/yo6g50.flac

Current ideas

Checking disks for damages by pulling back the metal cover and rotating the disk manually, looking for stuff like this: https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq4.htm or anything suspicious (the white cloth inside is too close and hairy for my liking).

Peeking into the drive to check for head damage and dirt.

Treating it like I treat running HDDs (do not unpower without parked heads, avoiding movement and vibrations), and generally being careful even when off (avoiding drops).

  • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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    2 days ago

    Or I’ll just… more bad financial decisions incoming - buy another one. Though I don’t know how much it’s worth. I got this one with the disks for €22. There’s one more (functional) USB ZIP drive with 3 disks, an older one which also needs external power (and is transparent), but it’s already at €35 and there’s 19 people watching the auction, so… Probably because it’s also with the original box and Iomegaware CDs.

    Really, I just wanted a functional ZIP drive just to have one. Honestly, if it was cheap, I’d just bring it with me and use it instead of a flash drive just for fun. That would get some stares. And 100MB is still pretty fine for documents (that are backed up).

    • JovialSodium@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 days ago

      If you want a novel but obsolete portable storage format, you could check out MiniDiscs. You’d need a working recorder that supports Hi-MD for data storage.

      I believe them to be more reliable than Zip discs, though I no data to back that. But still, it’s 20+ year old equipment with mechanical components, so equipment failure is just a matter of time.

      Working recorders can also be a bit pricey.

      • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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        1 day ago

        One I wish I could get is SuperDisk LS-240. It came some time later, so it wasn’t quite popular, but the later LS-240 drives had one very cool trick. They could re-format 1.44MB floppies to FD32MB format as they called it, bringing them to 32MB through the use of SMR. Of course, they couldn’t then be used in regular floppy drives again, but damn, 32MB on a regular 3.5" floppy.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk