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I’m trying to read a Iomega Zip 100 disk through old external Iomega Zip 100 drive, which I've connected to my MacBook Pro through the original USB 1.0 cable. It sounds like the drive is reading the disk (there’s no reason except age that either the drive or disk should be broken), but it doesn’t mount.

Is my MacBook Pro capable of reading this at all? What’s the last OS from which I’d have any hope of reading this disk?

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  • Have you run Disk Utility while the drive is plugged in. Sometimes you can "mount" the drive from there.
    – JoshP
    Sep 11, 2012 at 17:46
  • Yup, I tried this and it doesn't show up.
    – Amyunimus
    Sep 11, 2012 at 18:19
  • It seems you are unable to rule out whether it's the drive or not. So, buy a new used iomega zip drive off ebay. 100 or 250 should be fine. I guess a 250 one can read 100 disks. You could try on a Windows machine too, maybe if it reads it you can copy the data to a USB stick then try to read it in your MAC. If the disk is at fault then you need to call a data recovery expert or more, see if any can recover data from such a disk. You could also contact IOMEGA, maybe they will know of a technician that can.
    – barlop
    Sep 13, 2012 at 10:48

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A MacBook is certainly capable of working with this hardware. I remember when it was the preferred external media for Macs, and Iomega is still keeping the drivers up to date.

You mention that age is the only reason the disk or drive should be broken. Unfortunately, that's a pretty big reason — it’s possible that the magnetic material has degaussed. Try plugging the drive into another system. If that doesn’t work, try another drive, preferably one that is known to work.

If all else fails, you can find an expert who can recover data from flaky media. But that’s expensive, so unless the data is really valuable…

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  • Thanks, I'll check around for additional drives. sigh old technology... I remember when all we had were wood-burning discs.
    – Amyunimus
    Sep 12, 2012 at 20:21

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