Zip drives. + Iomega tape streamers.
At the time, the Zip drive seemed awesome. 100MB per cartridge, good data transfer speed ( SCSI ) and bootable with the right card.
Click
Click
Oh shit, click of death. A steely glance and order was restored. I decided, following good reviews in magazines, to buy an Iomega Ditto tape streamer. It worked perfectly under DOS, but was just proprietary enough that when I switched to Linux, it was useless.
Click
Click
Steely glance. Switch to CD-R.
I stored the Zip drive for future use. Recently I installed the Zip and CLICKGRINDBUZZZZZ. I was going to use it in my Archimedes as its drive is all of 40MB and making some odd noises.
Proprietary storage?, may it suck donkeys.
( moonbadger Doesn't judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 20:33, 6 replies)

yep,
stored loads of photos of Baby Bane on an Iomega zip drive. Bastard things would corrupt with a change of barometric pressure.
( bane, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 23:17, closed)

I remember the click of death all too well.
I was more of an LS-120 fan myself.
( benryves Now I'm radioactive! That can't be good!, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 3:21, closed)

I got a zip drive,
one of the high capacity types, that no one sold the disks for.
After filling two of the bundled disks with porn, I realised that I didn't really have much use for it.
Still, it did make a satisfying CLUNK noise when the disk was inserted, that you just don't get with optical/flash storage.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 8:43, closed)

If there is one thing I have
consistently wasted money on, it'd be storage.

Can't remember what it was called, but Iomega did something after the zip/jazz drives, was a bit more solid, was IIRC about 20gb capacity.

Only problem is, it was USB 1. Actually transferring 20GB of data would take about 4 days.

Add about a dozen thumb drives over the first few years they were available (32mb drive for £100 anybody? Oh, just me then).

If I had saved all the money I blew on useless tat, I'd be typing from my yacht in Mustique. Probably.
(username failed moderation, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 9:44, closed)

I had a Jazz drive
Fnarr
( Dervel OTBC, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 10:37, closed)

The fucking Ditto drive
What a heap of shit. Wish I knew that when I bought mine though. No drivers for anything newer than win98, slower than recording to an audio cassette and noisy as fuck.

It connected to the floppy drive connector too and promptly knackered the FDD. I still have it somewhere - I should burn it with fire.
( speedyballbangpots, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 13:20, closed)