[geeks] ZIP drive data recovery

[Dan Duncan]

I need to recover some data from about ten recently obtained 100MB Iomega
ZIP disks.  (So, up to 1 GB of data)

I have a parallel port ZIP drive in a box in the attic.  It worked 10 years
ago when I last used it.  Is it likely to still work, or do they not age
well?  (Especially when stored in an attic in Colorado rather than a
basement)

Ideally, I'd like to do this:  Dig up a system with a parallel port and USB
(I think I have one in the attic!), plug in a thumb drive (1GB or larger)
and the ZIP drive, boot a live linux image (CD or from the thumb drive
itself, preferably text mode and not GUI), and just mount the ZIP disks and
copy the contents to the thumb drive.  Hopefully I don't really need a hard
drive or installed OS, as long as I can find a bootable linux version that
supports both the parallel port ZIP drive and USB thumb drive.

Assuming my drive still works, any pointers on what version of linux is
likely to support both parallel port ZIP drives and USB mass storage right
out of the box?

I actually bought this ZIP drive 20 years ago so I didn't have to deal with
multiple floppies when frequently reinstalling and updating slackware.  I
would probably just re-create the boot and root floppies for an old
slackware version except they wouldn't support the thumb drive.  I guess I
could toss an old IDE drive into the system and use slackware to copy from
the ZIP disk to the HD, and then use another method to get the data from
the HD to the USB stick.

Should I have snagged a later model USB ZIP drive when I had the chance?
Yes, I should have.  If this doesn't pan out, would someone like to loan me
a USB ZIP drive?  I'll pay shipping both ways and the return package would
have ten blank 100MB ZIP disks which you could enjoy.  :)

-- 
Dan Duncan