Iomega Zip Tools Driver 5.01 For Mac

Iomega Zip Disk Reader
Iomega Zip Tools Driver 5.01 For Mac Download
Iomega Hdd Mac

Iomega Tools 4.3 enables the management of Iomega removeable media and drives. This is the first release with support for Jaz drives alongside Zip drives. The application's splash screen hints that it may also work with Bernoulli boxes. Top DL: here is an image of the Iomega Zip Tools disk, version 4.3.1. Iomega Zip drives were the choice for expanded external storage in the 90’s and early 2000 because alternatives were 1.44MB floppy disks that were becoming a problem due to the nature of files and multimedia need much more space. CD writers were available at the time but were slow and un-reliable at times. Also Zip drives were much cheaper to purchase, however the disks for the Zip drivers. Click on the Device, then Driver tab, choose Roll Back if available. If not then choose Uninstall, restart PC to reinstall driver. If no newer or this doesn't help, then go to the USB category in Device Manager, open each Enhanced, Hub and Host controller, from Driver tab select Roll back if available, or if.

This article discusses several common issues reported with Iomega ZIP Drives and further troubleshooting steps to help rectify these issues. Issues covered in this article are:

ZIP disk does not appear on the desktop.
User hears a clicking sound when disk is inserted and the disk does not appear on the desktop.
ZIP cartridges is not ejected far enough to remove it from the drive.

1) Question: Why will my ZIP disk icon not appear on the desktop?

Answer: This condition can be caused by many different issues. One of the following suggestions should resolve this:

Verify that the Iomega driver is not covered with a red 'X' during the startup process. Restart the computer and watch for the Iomega driver icon and verify that is not covered with a red 'X'. If the icon is covered by a red 'X', use the extensions manager and turn off all extensions except the Iomega driver. Then restart the computer, if this issue persists, the user should replace the Iomega driver extension by either dragging this extension file from the Restore CD-ROM disc that came with the Macintosh computer, or reinstalling the Mac OS.

There may be a SCSI conflict which is effecting the ZIP drive from working properly. Verify that the user has removed all external SCSI device to eliminate this as an issue. If the ZIP drive now mounts properly, you should change its SCSI ID so it will mount with the computers other SCSI devices.

The ZIP cartridge may not be fully inserted into the drive and not be seated correctly. The user should insert the disk firmly into the drive until they hear an audible 'click' sound. This indicates that the disk is fully inserted and should operate normally.

The ZIP Drive may need to be reset to properly read inserted cartridges. There are two reset options a user can try:

Use the manual eject hole to reset the mechanism. The user should use a small straightened paper clip, insert the paper clip into the small hole which is located slightly above and to the right of the center of the ZIP Cartridge slot. This can be a little tricky since the manual eject lever is quite small. To verify that the lever is being actuated correctly, have a ZIP cartridge inserted in the drive - the cartridge should eject when pressing the lever.
Use the eject button on the front of the ZIP drive. To access this button the plastic bezel around the drive will need to be removed. Once the cover is removed, press and hold the black button while restarting the computer. Once the computer starts to boot, let go of the button. After the computer is fully restarted, test by inserting a disk to see if this procedure resolved this issue.

Important: If you do not believe the user can remove the front bezel without damaging the computer, either refer them to a local Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) for assistance, or dispatch an on site service agent to perform the reset.

2) Question: The user hears a clicking sound when a ZIP disk is inserted and the disk icon does not appear on the desktop, what is wrong?

Answer: This symptom is normal when inserting a ZIP cartridge with an earlier version of the Iomega driver software is being used. This condition can be resolved by one of the following suggestions:

Keep the disk in the drive and let it continue to 'click'. Within 2-5 minutes the user should see a dialog appear asking if they would like to initialize the disk. If the user clicks Yes, a new driver will be installed and this issue should no longer occur. Once the new driver is installed the disk will be backwards compatible with previous versions of the Iomega drivers. Important: If the user chooses to initialize the ZIP cartridge all data on that cartridge will be lost. If the data is important and not backed up the user should take the ZIP cartridge to a computer running an older version of the Iomega software and back up the data to the hard disk. After the disk is backed up they can then initialize the disk without worry of loosing data.

Another option is to download the latest Iomega Tools software which lets users update the driver software on a ZIP disk without having to initialize them.

This software can be obtain from the following location: http://www.iomega.com/support/software/mac.html. Once at this location, click on the item named 'mac503.hqx' to download the software.

After following the software installation instructions from the Iomega web site, follow the steps below to configure of this software to address the clicking issue with your Zip drive.

Open the Iomega Drive Options control panel
Go to the special menu and choose Advanced Options
Make sure the default setting is set to, Always update the driver on the disk
Click Save
Click Save again
Close the control panel
Restart the computer
After the computer restarts, insert the ZIP disk.

3) Question: My ZIP cartridges are not ejected far enough to remove it from the drive, what is wrong?

Answer: This issue seems to occur mainly with the Power Macintosh G3 Desktop computers. The cartridge is not ejected far enough from the front on the ZIP drive's plastic bezel and users tend to push the cartridge back into the drive slightly making it almost impossible to remove.

Testing has shown that if you attempt to remove the cartridge by placing your finger on the bottom edge of the cartridge and push up slightly while pulling out, the cartridge can be removed almost every time. When users try to remove the cartridge by grasping the top and bottom edges at the same time is when this issue occurs. When attempting to remove the cartridge in this fashion the it tends to be pushed further back into the drive making it nearly impossible to remove.

If the troubleshooting steps above do not resolve the user's issue then the drive should be serviced. You can either refer the user to an AASP, or dispatch an on site service agent.

Article ID: 30380

In the beginning, personal computers used cassette tape drives. Then came floppy drives, followed by hard drives. And then came removable media drives such as SyQuest, Bernoulli, and – perhaps best know of all – Zip.

Before Zip

Iomega had made a name for itself with its Bernoulli Box, a lower cost alternative to SyQuest drives with their hard disk platters. SyQuest had established itself with a 44 MB 5-1/4″ cartridge drive system using the same 130mm platters found in hard drives.

By contrast, Bernoulli cartridges had a floppy disk spinning at 3,000 rpm, using the Bernoulli Principle to pull the disk’s surface toward the read-write head. Unfortunately, the original Bernoulli cartridge system used huge media, measuring about 8″ x 11″ (210 x 275 mm).

Bernoulli Box II used a smaller cartridge along with a drive that fit in a standard 5-1/4″ bay. Bernoulli drives were noted for their reliability, and they came in many different capacities.

Beyond Floppy Disks

Although Apple wasn’t the first to use 3.5″ floppy disks, it was the first to standardize on them instead of the older, larger 5-1/4″ floppies. In the PC world, single-sided 3.5″ floppies held 360 KB of data, double-sided disks 720 KB. On Macs, the same disks stored 400 KB and 800 KB respectively.

High-density (HD) 3.5″ floppies arrived in 1987, and both PCs and Macs used them to store 1.4 MB of information. The same year IBM introduced its DSED (Double Sided Extended Density) 2.88 MB floppy drive and disks, which never caught on. The market needed a removable media drive with more capacity than floppies but at a much better price than SyQuest.

The Zip 100

Iomega brought its Zip drive and Zip disks to market in March 1995 with 100 MB capacity. Zip uses a cartridge a little larger and somewhat thicker than a 3.5″ floppy disk. It was also far faster than a floppy drive, which is part of what kept the competing LS-120 SuperDisk from catching on – it had higher capacity than Zip but was far, far slower. (Interestingly, SuperDisk began as an Iomega project that they ditched in favor of Zip. 3M acquired the technology from Iomega and brought it to market.)

With their relatively high capacity and low price (initially $20 per cartridge), Zip took off, selling nearly one million in 1995. A few Zip disks could back up most hard drives in 1995; one Zip disk could hold a bootable system plus diagnostics. Zip was also a great way to send files out to a service bureau.

Zip disks came preformatted for Macs or PCs, and either could be reformatted for the other platform using Iomega Tools.

A Word of Warning

The SCSI Zip drive allows you to choose one of two possible SCSI IDs, 5 or 6. SCSI ID 6 is rock solid, but SCSI ID 5 can have issues when other devices on the SCSI bus are moving a lot of data. Avoid using SCSI ID 5 if at all possible.

How Fast (or Slow) Is It?

In 2013, Lui Gough tested several different types of Zip drives on his AMD Sempton 3300+ powered PC running Windows XP SP3. Here are the average and maximum transfer rates by drive mechanism:

ATAPI Zip 100: 1.0 MB/s avg., 1.4 Mb/s max
USB Zip 100, bus powered: 0.7 MB/s avg., 0.8 MB/s max
SCSI Zip 100: 0.6 MB/s avg., 0.7 MB/s max
Parallel port Zip 100: 0.2 MB/s across the board

Iomega Zip Disk Reader

Cam Giesbrecht ran benchmark tests on his Mac Quadra 605, also comparing HD floppy and hard drive performance. His results:

floppy disk, writes @ 61.6 KB/s, reads @ 78.6 KB/s
SCSI Zip disk, writes @ 1084 KB/s, reads @ 1123 KB/s (50% higher than SCSI on PC)
internal Quantum hard drive, writes @ 1497 KB/s, reads @ 1850 KB/s
external Quantum hard drive, writes @ 1367 KB/s, reads @ 1367 KB/s

The SCSI Zip drive performs better on this Mac and the one tested by Lui Gough on his Windows PC, in part because Macs were optimized for SCSI drives in those days while PCs were optimized for ATA drives. The Zip shows itself to be a decent backup medium, writing data at 70-80% of the write speed of the two tested hard drives.

As for the floppy, there is no comparison. Zip stores 70x as much data and runs about 15x as fast.

Finally, the Iomega Zip FAQ benchmarks Zip 100, SyQuest 44 (an older technology), and the hard drive in a 1989 Mac IIci, obtaining these results:

hard drive: 119 KB/s random reads, 1099 KB/s 256K sequential reads, 71.1 KB/s random writes, 1216 KB/s 256K sequential writes
Zip 100: 38.5 KB/s random reads, 1186 KB/s 256K sequential reads, 38.9 KB/s random writes, 1189 KB/s 256K sequential writes
SyQuest 44: 37.3 KB/s random reads, 579 KB/s 256K sequential reads, 36.1 KB/s random writes, 579 KB/s 256K sequential writes

This seems to be comparing a 1989 vintage hard drive with two removable media options. Even an older hard drive outperforms Zip 100 and SyQuest 44 for random reads and writes, but the big surprise is that for 256 KB sequential reads, Zip beats the hard drive, while it takes a close second for 256 KB sequential writes, just behind the older hard drive.

Overall Zip had decent performance, especially compared to older hard drives. With contemporary mid-1990s hard drives, Zip would fall further behind yet still acquit itself nicely.

Lots of Options

Supported Platforms

As long as Iomega kept things simple, Zip continued to grow and grow. It supported most operating system of that era:

MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, although Windows 7 and later will not work with parallel port drives
Mac System 6 through Mac OS 9.2.2 plus OS X (System 6 requires an Iomega Drive version prior to 5.0, as does the Mac Plus)
IBM OS/2
AmigaOS 3.5 and later
Oracle Solaris 8-11
some Linux and BSD versions, although Zip is not universally supported
some users have made SCSI Zip drives work with Apple II and Atari ST computers

Later versions of Zip supported 250 MB (launched December 1998) and 750 MB (August 2002) of storage. Zip drive sales began their decline in 1999 as CD-R and DVD-R grew in popularity, followed by the explosion in USB thumb drives.

Driver Downloads

IomegaWare 4.0.2 for Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP. Not compatible with Windows 95 or NT.
Iomega Zip 100MB USB Drivers Download, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10.
Iomega Zip 100MB Parallel Port Drivers Download, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10.
Iomega Zip 100MB ATAPI Drivers Download, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10.
Iomega Zip 100MB SCSI Drivers Download, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10.
IomegaWare 4.0.2 for Mac OS 8.6 or later, OS X 10.1-10.2.1. Drivers are not needed with OS X 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6.
Zip driver 4.2 for Mac Plus running System 6

Interfaces

Zip drives were available in numerous interfaces, including:

IDE, an early ATA standard that does not support ATAPI commands
ATAPI, a later version of ATA specifically for removable media; Zip 100, 250, and 750
SCSI, internal and external, found on almost all Macs of the era, Zip 100 and Zip 250
IEEE 1284 for parallel ports with passthrough for your printer, Zip 100 and Zip 250
Zip Plus, an external drive that works with SCSI or parallel port, Zip 100 only

Iomega Zip Tools Driver 5.01 For Mac Download

There were also three later implementations:

USB 1.1, Zip 100 and Zip 250
FireWire/IEEE 1394, Zip 250 and Zip 750
USB 2.0, Zip 750

Incompatibilities

With each additional Zip format, Iomega further muddied the waters. It was simple when every Zip disk stored 100 MB and every Zip drive could read and write to it.

Zip 250 drives can read and write both Zip 100 and Zip 250 disks, although they write to Zip 100 disks very slowly. Zip 100 drives automatically eject Zip 250 disks as unreadable.

Iomega Hdd Mac

Zip 750 drives can read Zip 100 disks but not write to them at all. It is fully compatible with Zip 250 disks. Zip 100 and Zip 250 drives will eject a Zip 750 drive as unreadable.

Interestingly, Zip was listed as one of the 25 worst technology products (#15) by PCWorld in 2006 – and one of the 50 best (#23) in 2007!

Iomega was acquired by EMC in June 2008, making it part of the world’s largest storage company. EMC and Lenovo partnered in 2013 to create LenovoEMC, which took over Iomega’s business.

* No, it isn’t a typo. Compleat is a legitimate, albeit archaic, spelling for complete. As Kenneth G. Wilson says in The Columbia Guide to Standard American English: “This obsolete spelling of the adjective complete suggests an air of antiquity that seems to please some of those who name things….” We find that fitting for Low End Mac’s Compleat Guides to “obsolete” hardware and software.

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