Zip disks are fun

I've had a couple zip drives laying around for awhile now but I've never used them because I've never bought zip disks for them. With the huge hard drives we have now, every new computer having a DVD burner, and flash media... no one uses zip disks anymoar. They're kinda expensive and just aren't practical. But my girlfriend got me some for $1 and a yard sale. $1 is pretty damn good. They were made in 1994 but hadn't been opened yet. Getting the zip drive working in kubuntu was kind of a pain. It's a really old ZIP 250 that plugs into the parallel port. Here's how you make one of these work on ubuntu (or how I did it):
1. make a mount point
sudo mkdir /media/zip

2. load the imm module (load ppa for zip 100 drives)
sudo modprobe imm

3. Mount the disk
sudo mount /dev/sda4 /media/zip

4. That's all there is to it. If you want imm to be loaded on startup do this:
sudo nano /etc/modules
and add imm to the bottom (or ppa for zip 100)
Note: I've noticed imm will not load if a disk is not inserted. You will have to load it manually if a disk is not inserted at startup.

5. press ctrl+x and then press enter when done

6. set up fstab
sudo nano /etc/fstab

7. add this line (change vfat to whatever filesystem you will use on it. I used ext2) then save.
/dev/sda4 /media/zip vfat noauto,user 0 0

8. Format if needed
You can format a zip disk the same way you would a hard drive. I used QTParted and formatted it as ext2.

You zip drive should now be accessable when your computer boots. Sometimes it acts a little weird though. If for some reason your zip drive isn't letting you access it, try reloading the imm module.
sudo modprobe -r imm && sudo modprobe imm

Here's another neat trick: eject disk from the command line:
eject /dev/sda4
I could do that for hours. srsly.

I got bored and didn't know what to use my zip disk for. After awhile I decided that I'd like to backup my /etc directory. Here's how I did that:
sudo su

mkdir /media/zip/sysbackup/etc

cd /etc

find . -depth -print0 | cpio --null --sparse --no-preserve-owner --preserve-modification-time -pvd /media/zip/sys_backup/etc

Neat huh?
I was surprised at how fast these disks really are. They're not that bad.