The USB-powered ZIP 250 is Iomega’s newest external zip drive. The single USB cord provides the connection to the computer as well as the power for the drive. Make sure the drive is plugged either directly into the computer or into a powered hub though, as its power draw may create a problem if you plug it into an un-powered hub such as the keyboard. The USB power eliminates the need for the bulky power bricks of Iomega’s older zip products and makes the product easier to install. The drive itself is made of sleek molded plastic and can operate both horizontally and vertically on your desk.

The ZIP 250 is compatible with both Mac and PC systems with a USB port, so if you have multiple systems and multiple platforms you can easily share the drive among them by simply plugging the drive in. You don’t even need to reboot! It’s small and light enough to carry with a laptop, and because it’s usb powered it provides a completely self-contained removable media solution for a laptop.

The drive itself is capable of reading both the old format zip 100 disks as well as the newer zip 250 disks. It is quite fast when accessing the newer disks, however, I was disappointed by its sub-par performance with zip 100 disks, data copy operations seemed to take forever. The fact that it is still compatible with the zip 100 disks is important however, because one of the main reasons I got this drive was so that I could swap files with my friends easily.

The zip 250 is ideal for people that need to access data on zip 100 or zip 250 media, or if they simply need a small amount of space for daily backups. For power users however, the slower speed of the zip and its small space make it inadequate for bigger tasks. Those users may simply want to look into buying a CD-burner. They are relatively cheap nowadays and the media (blank CDs) cost a lot less than zip disks.


Recommended: Yes