IOMEGA ZIP DRIVE Erasure: Disk Utility and Disk Drill results

You're welcome. I hope it's as easy a task for you as I remember. It's unfortunate that certain older hardware lost its significance and value, after advances in technology left it behind in the dust. I've still got never-opened Zip 100, 250, and 750 disks. CD-R/RW drives met the same fate. Good luck!

Iomega always recommended that reformatting be done with their IomegaWare utility software, to ensure the functional integrity of the disk. If you have an older Mac, the last version of IomegaWare for pre-OS X Macs was 4.0.2, available here.

As someone who also has a collection of Zip disks and every drive capacity manufactured, I really don't think that anybody would want to use them as we near the end of 2024. Other than being an interesting part of the evolution of the original floppy disk, the Zip technology proved to be problematic at times and quickly obsolete when CD burning and flash drive technologies replaced it. If you have no need to retrieve files from the disks, rather than spending time to completely erase them to give away, why not just extract the floppy disk from inside the plastic case? The aluminum shutter is easily bent up and removed, providing a wide enough slot to insert a screwdriver or putty knife and gently pry up/down, angled at opposite corners, until the upper and lower halves of the case pop apart at the top. Once you've popped it open across the top and spread the halves far enough, you can extract the disk from the case without completely separating the two halves. If you want to be sure that they're completely destroyed, the disks can be pulled off the metal hub and cut up with scissors. I did this with a bad Zip disk out of curiosity, just to compare its construction to the traditional floppy disk. If you decide to do this, you may want to wear a pair of gloves to protect your hands. In the interest of safety, I'll recommend eye protection, even though the plastic used is not a brittle type that's prone to shattering and causing injury.