Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

Zip drives, introduced by Iomega in 1994, were a major leap over floppy disks — offering 100MB capacity versus 1.44MB, significantly faster read speeds, and reasonable pricing. They gained enough traction that Dell and Apple bundled them in PCs. However, a notorious hardware failure known as the 'click of death' damaged their reputation, while the rise of CDs (700MB, cheaper to produce) and USB flash drives (especially USB 2.0 in 2002 with 20x faster speeds) made Zip drives obsolete. Iomega attempted to extend the brand with ZipCD and PocketZip, but neither succeeded. By the mid-2000s, the format had all but disappeared.