Where I was it went from 3.5" floppies to USB drives. (There were CDs, but not as easy for things like schoolwork.)
ZIP needed a whole ecosystem of drives, so did you have that?
My first computer was an old used Mac IIvi that came with a 40mb hard drive. I was so stoked to over double my storage when I got my Zip drive. I still have a disk in a drawer that I can’t possibly get data from.