We can transfer your old Zip disks onto modern media so that you can access the data, if you have old Zip disks and no longer have a drive to access them, we can perform Zip disk transfer to CD or DVD, or send the contents to you electronically.
Zip disk transfer
For straightforward Zip disk transfer (PC or Mac format Zip disks), we charge £25.00 for the first floppy disk plus £15.00 for each additional disk. For batches of 5 or more Zip disks we can offer price reductions. The age of Zip drives we typically receive means that in some cases there are issues with transferring the files, but we will attempt to recover all files we can even in cases where the Zip disk has a problem.
We can transfer the Zip disk data onto CD or DVD, or can email or FTP these back to you in cases where you require urgent access, if the amount of data is not too high. For bulk Zip disk transfer, i.e. 10 or more Zip disks, we can offer reduced prices – please contact us for details if you have a large number of Zip disks to transfer.
Unreadable Zip disks and corrupted files
With old Zip disks, there is a significant chance that a simple attempt to copy the Zip disk will fail, because most Zip disks we encounter are 10 years old or more. In our experience the failure rate is typically anywhere between 5% and 20%, although these statistics include Zip disks where a single file cannot be transferred, as well as those where the entire Zip disk is unreadable or appears to be unformatted. However, in many cases we can recover the missing data.
Our approach is to perform a straightforward copy of the Zip disks where possible and report back indicating the nature of any problem Zip disks and unreadable files, so that you can decide whether or not to proceed with a recovery attempt on any disks or individual files which could not be copied. Data recovery for a single Zip disk which has corruption or disk read problems is typically £30 each but we offer significant reductions for batches of corrupted Zip disks.
We recommend that you act sooner rather than later to secure the information from your Zip disks, as the older a Zip disk, the more likely it will suffer problems.