[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
> > Anyone know what this bloke was on about with this 'click of
> > death' thing, regarding iomega zip drives?
> I don't know a whole lot about it, but apparently sometimes when a
> zip cart is put in the drive, the drive itself will make some
> particular clikcing noises, and render that cart totally useless....
> From what I recall, it is caused by heat problems..
No, the "Click of Death" thing is a problem with the IOmega Zip drives that
has resulted from an apparant fragility in the drive heads. The problem is
apparantly somewhat recursive, also, in that the following can occur:
1. You're working with your Zip drive and put in a disk. For whatever
reason, the head, in attempting to seek for the starting track point,
can damage the drive. The clicking sound occurs when the head is doing
its initial seek. If the disk is damaged, then the drive will continue
to click continuously.
2. If the user/owner is unlucky, when the drive was trying to read the
damaged disk it may have exceeded it's normal mechanical positioning
range, and damaged the head positioning mechanism. The drive will now
proceed to damage any other disk which is inserted in it.
3. If the user/owner is attempting to recover valued data, doesn't know
about the "click of death" failures, and tries that disk in another
drive he/she may kill that drive also. If this sounds like some sort
of "mechanical virus", that's what it seems like. The problem is due
to the relatively fragile nature of the engineering in the Zip drives.
I have a good friend who runs a very successful computer building
business. They will no longer use Zip drives unless the owner
specifically demands it, and then they will warn the owner.
In fairness to Iomega, they have finally acknowledged the problem, though they
have been mediocre to shoddy in resolution. They will replace drives and
disks, though you may have quite a battle. I tried to get my drive replaced
for several weeks and could get no response. My business owner friend tried,
and it's taken him three weeks to finally get a positive response from Iomega.
We expect my new drive this week - and I'll probably look for a fish to take
this thing off my hands!
You can get more information, of the "non-corporate PR type" on cnet at
<http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,18622,00.html>
Best
rickf
--
Rick Forrister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Opera: Greek word meaning "death by music".
--Anonymous
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