[kd5bjo]

The key thing that you get by integrating the two tools is the ability to more easily extract a single file from a multipart archive— Instead of having to reconstruct the entire file, you can look in the part/diskette with the index to find out which other part/diskette you need to use to get at the file you want.

[canucker2016]

Don't forget that with this two-step method, you also require enough diskspace to hold the entire ZIP archive before it's sharded.

AFAIK you can create a ZIP archive saved to floppy disks even if your source hard disk has low/almost no free space.

Phil Katz (creator of the ZIP file format) had a different set of design constraints.