As with most things computer there are times when old media formats appear and a need to retrieve the data. One such occurrence happened recently when several ZIP disks arrived. The IOMEGA ZIP drives were parallel port connected SCSI drives that were popular back in the late 90’s early 2000’s. They were great for backups and had more capacity that floppy disks. They are before USB attached drives came into being. So the question is how do I read these drives?
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 MB, and then 750 MB. The format became the most popular of the superfloppy products which filled a niche market in the late 1990s portable storage market. The Driver Update Tool – is a utility that contains more than 27 million official drivers for all hardware, including iomega usb zip 100 driver. This utility was recognized by many users all over the world as a modern, convenient alternative to manual updating of the drivers and also received a high rating from known computer publications.
Installation of IOMEGA Installation with Ubuntu 9.10 and higher only require a single module to be loaded. Editing the /etc/module file and adding ppa is all that is required. This is the Parallel port driver. After editing /etc/modules reboot the system. Make sure to have the drive plugged in and powered on. Once the system has rebooted we can check to see what was detected. We can run the following command.
$ sudo cat / proc / scsi / scsi Here we see the IOMEGA drive. Attached devices: Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 Vendor: ATA Model: ST2000DM001-1ER1 Rev: CC26 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 Vendor: TSSTcorp Model: DVD+-RW TS-L633C Rev: DW40 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 05 Host: scsi6 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00 Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 100 Rev: K.0 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 At this point all you need to do is insert a disk and Linux will auto-mount and you can now access the files. Actually the IOMEGA Zip 100 drive came in a variety of interfaces. If you’re sure it’s a scsi drive and not a parallel port drive it will only work when connected to a scsi controller card.
The 25 pin scsi connector may look the same as a parallel port connector but it does NOT support the same functionality. SCSI devices equipped with a 25 pin connector that looks like the 25 pin parallel port cannot simply be connected to the parallel port willy nilly. The pin configurations as well as the communication protocols used by the two ports are significantly different from one another to prevent them from working. Iomega sold a 25 pin ISA bus SCSI controller card specifically for use with their SCSI based devices.
And while you may not be able to install an ISA bus card in today’s computers SCSI cards are still available to fit today’s computers and in addition to one of those you should only need to purchase a pin adapter to go from the D68/D50 pin external connector currently in use down to the D25 SCSI connector Iomega devices used. There are also USB to SCSI adapters available though they don’t seem to be very easy to locate (or very affordable either). I am using v14.04 lts. I first tried to mount the syquest drive using those instructions first before searching the web and coming across your site. I’m going to try those instructions again and will let you know where I am running into problems which I will list below: I created the text file as instructed but when I type the following command: chmod +x paride’, I get the following error message: ‘chmod: cannot access ‘paride’, no such file or directory’. The text file paride is currently on the desktop.
Should it be somewhere else or can the command be modified to point to file on the desktop? Hi, As requested, I have run the commands that you have asked me to run. The results of the commands as copied from a terminal session is pasted below: arthur@arthur-T5082:/Desktop$ cd Desktop bash: cd: Desktop: No such file or directory arthur@arthur-T5082:/Desktop$ cd /Desktop arthur@arthur-T5082:/Desktop$ ls Paride.sh Paride.txt Untitled Document arthur@arthur-T5082:/Desktop$ chmod 755 paride.sh chmod: cannot access ‘paride.sh’: No such file or directory arthur@arthur-T5082:/Desktop$ Please let me know what’s going on. I ran the command successfully after picking up on the case-sensitivity comment you made, then ran the script.
I got the following errors below: arthur@arthur-T5082:/Desktop$ sudo./Paride.sh: not found: 2:./Paride.sh:: not found: 5:./Paride.sh: not found.ATAL: Module paride: not found: 7:./Paride.sh:: not found: 12:./Paride.sh: Inserting the necessary modules modprobe: ERROR: could not insert ‘pd’: No such device: not found: 16:./Paride.sh:: not found: 19:./Paride.sh:: not found: 29:./Paride.sh:: not found: 31:./Paride.sh: Running commandsmou./Paride.sh: 72:./Paride.sh: Syntax error: end of file unexpected (expecting “then”) arthur@arthur-T5082:/Desktop$ Thanks for your help so far. We’re making progress slowly but surely. Hi, When I run the dmesg command, I get the following info: “paride: epat registered as protocol 0″. When I run the command ‘modprobe epat # Syquest Protocol from a terminal line I get no errors. When I run the command ‘modprobe pd # Syquest Driver from a terminal line I get the following error message below: ‘ERROR: could not insert ‘pd’: Operation not permitted’. Any blank or non-execcutable line is the cause of the ‘not found: 2:./Paride.sh: ‘not found: 5:./Paride.sh: errors. I got rid of them by deleting the blank lines.
The line ‘not found.ATAL: Module paride’ I’m not sure where it is coming from but I am guessing that it’s because there is no module called Paride. When I type in just ‘dmesg’, I get a lot of info about the system.
I went to the referenced address and found several companies offering help with downloading drivers. It gave the appearance that they could provide Iomega Zip Drive support.
After subscribing to Driver Navigator and Driver Update, I learned this was not true. Driver Navigator refunded my money immediately, without question. Driver Navigator is continuing to try to get me to keep the software and is not wanting to refund my money, even though they state a 60 day 100 percent refund if not satisfied. I have told them why I do not wish to continue use of their software and they keep trying to get me to keep it. I will have to go to PayPal and get them to arbitrate. I would advise anyone against subscribing to Driver Navigator.
I did learn through a forum that driver software is not required for the USB supported Zip Drives. I was able to just plug in my Iomega 250 Zip Drive and download my date. Just plugging in the USB cable activates the drive. I also learned from this forum that there are no driver updates beyond Windows XP. Purchase a PCI (or PCIe)-to-EIDE adapter for desktop computers. I got mine from Microcenter: Purchase an ATAPI Zip 250 drive from a junk peddler on eBay.
I got mine locally from a local used computer parts dealer: Once you get that hooked up in Windows you will have access to your drive and Zip disks without any additional software. I just did it two nights ago. No software 'should' be required as the PCI-to-EIDE adapter will operate the ATAPI Zip drive from the auspices of its own SCSI driver.
This page has a lot of drivers for the USB Zip drives, and I tried one of them on a Windows 98 Second Edition retrobox and it worked with the ATAPI Zip 250 connected directly to the motherboard's EIDE connector (no adapter required). It would probably have worked on Windows 10 as well, but my Windows 10 desktop does not have an EIDE connector so I was forced to acquire the adapter spoken of. Your mileage may vary: Most of the 'driver' sites are scams.
Find someone with IT experience to get your solution going if you don't follow mine, but mine is simple.