Not being able to sell the ZIP drive for a reasonable price should give you a clue about
how the demand for them has dropped, because so many better alternatives are now
available. Even Iomega has drastically dropped the price of the 750 MB external ZIP drive
by more than 40% at its web site. Wherever did you get those stats for the maximum number
of CDs that a drive can burn? I suggested the alternative of burning CDs or DVDs
because of the economics. About 50 cents for a CDR or CD-RW disk that can store about 700
MB v. about $10 for a ZIP disk that can store about 250 MB. If you just want to transfer
files, there's the option of getting a flash memory drive, which have come way down in
price. If speed is a concern, it leaves ZIP drives and CD burners in the dust. Being the
size of a key, a flash drive is very portable.
As for Spanning, you can use WinZip:
Multiple Disk Spanning
WinZip® makes it easy to create Zip files that "span" multiple disks. This is useful if
the files you are working with will not fit on one disk.
Creating spanned Zip files
To make a Zip file that spans multiple disks, simply create a new Zip file on a removable
disk, then add files to the Zip as you normally would. If the disk fills during Add
operation, you will be prompted for another disk. Simply insert the next disk and click
the OK button.
Important: disk spanning is not available when adding files to an existing archive; it is
only available while creating a new archive. Also note that you cannot add files to or
remove files from a Zip file that spans disks. WinZip requires pre-formatted disks (you
can format disks using My Computer or Windows Explorer).
Example:
To zip the files in your c:\data folder to a Zip file called A:\DATA.ZIP:
Start WinZip.
Drag and drop the c:\data folder from My Computer or Windows Explorer to the WinZip
window.
In the Add dialog box, type the filename of the Zip file (A:\DATA.ZIP).
Click the Add button.
If more than one disk is needed, you will be prompted for additional disks.
Extracting from spanned Zip files
To extract files from a spanned Zip file, insert the last disk of the series and open the
Zip file using WinZip; this will display the directory of the Zip file and allow you to
extract the files. WinZip will prompt you for the disks as needed to complete the
operation.
Another option is to SPLIT the ZIP file:
Splitting Zip files
WinZip® makes it easy to create Zip files that are split into smaller pieces of a size
that you specify. There are several reasons why you might want to do this, such as:
To overcome e-mail size limits. Some e-mail systems limit the size of attachments; if you
want to e-mail a large Zip file that exceeds your limit, you can split it into smaller
parts and e-mail them separately.
As an alternative to spanned Zip files when you want to make multiple copies of the disk
set.
As an alternative to spanned Zip files when you want to make the disk contents as a
separate step from making the disks themselves.
To assist with large downloads. Some users may have difficulty downloading very large Zip
files from web sites, FTP sites, etc. You can use the split Zip feature to break large
files into smaller pieces that can be downloaded separately.
To split a Zip file into smaller pieces:
Open or create the Zip file.
Choose Split from the Actions menu.
Specify the name to be used for the split Zip file. The name must be different from the
name of the open Zip file.
Specify the size to be used for the individual parts. You can choose from common sizes
using the Part size drop-down list or you can specify your own size. To specify your own
size, choose "Other size" in the drop-down list and type the desired size in the Other
size field. You can specify the size in bytes, kilobytes (KB), or megabytes (MB); indicate
which you're using by clicking the appropriate radio button. The minimum size allowed is
65,536 bytes (64KB).
Click OK to create the split Zip file.
Notes
Each of the segments of the split Zip file will have a different extension. WinZip creates
files with names like Data.Z01, Data.Z02, and so on, except for the very last segment of
the new Zip file. The last segment will always have the .zip extension (e.g., Data.zip).
To open the split Zip file, open the file with the .zip extension. Don't try to open any
of the files with the numbered extensions; WinZip won't recognize them as Zip files.
Once the split Zip file has been opened, you can work with it much as you would work with
a regular Zip file, except you can't add any new files or remove existing files. Some
operations such as creating self-extracting Zip files and editing comments are also
disabled for split Zip files.
The sizes listed as "1.2MB," "1.44MB," and "2.88MB" are approximate. The segments of the
split Zip file are sized appropriately to fit on media of the specified size. You cannot,
however, use decimal points when specifying sizes in the Other size field.
The split Zip file format is an extension of the Zip 2.0 specification. Therefore, some
Zip utility programs may not be able to open split Zip files. Please see Split Zip file
compatibility information for more details.
--
T.C.
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In memory of my mentor Alex Nichol MVP
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manu08 said:
OK, how do i "span" it? Or how do i split the files after zipping them?
t.cruise i have a cd writer but no cd-rw's so sometimes when you want to
transfer a 300mb file its more useful to use a zip drive since i have one and
cannot sell it anywhere for a reasonable price and not sure if you know but
every cd writer and dvd writer has a certain amount of dvd's/cd's itll burn
and then eventually stop burning, most are around 500 or 1000 burns. That
makes a zip drive a lil more worthwhile doesn't it?lol
t.cruise said:
You probably do not want to hear this, but ZIP drives are obsolete for many reasons. You
can get a CDR/CD-RW drive for about $30, and disks which have a capacity of more than 700
MB can be gotten for as little as 50 cents. I copied the files from my ZIP disks (which
always had a high propensity for failure), and are expensive) to CD, and got rid of my ZIP
drive. Or, for $59.99 you can get an Emprex drive that burns DVDs which cost about a
dollar and can store about 4.7 GB of data. It also burns CDs, DVD-RW, and double layer
DVDs which store about 8.5 GB of data (but the double layer disks are more expensive).
I've hard many good things about the Emprex DVD/CD burner. Check it out at:
http://tinyurl.com/ck3r2
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T.C.
t__cruise@[NoSpam]hotmail.com
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In memory of my mentor Alex Nichol MVP
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manu08 said:
I have a zip drive, 250MB USB powered. I've got 5 disks giving me a total
storage of around 1.25GB. Many times im required to transfer files more than
250MB in size. I wanted to know if there is a software that could probably
split up the file(s) so that i could make it fit onto more than one disk (on
as many as required)?
