Re: click-death w/ zip drive

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Joseph Lee writes ...
> 
> LJSILICON <ljsilicon@aol.com> spawned virtual particles writing:
> : Can you be a little more specific?
> 
> Search Yahoo for click of death or zip drive and click.
> 
> Basically, click click click click, disk trashed, drive trashed.
> Spreads to other disks and drives.
> ....


     Weird! A kind of Click of Death cult seems to have sprouted on the
net. There's even an Unofficial Iomega Click Death Home Page 

http://www.thirdeyesp.com/jatin/iomega/index.htm

with an animated Zip Drive eating disks and an 8-second Click of Death
WAV file.


The following is from a CNET article by Paul Festa ...

>>
....
A source who identified himself as a former Iomega
technician said the problem was well-known within
the company when he started working there more
than two years ago. He said the problem was not
common, but noted that it accounted for about half
of the malfunctioning drives on which he worked. 

The source said the clicking sound is caused by the
read/write head bumping against its movement
stops--bumpers that keep the head within its
intended range--while searching for and not finding
track 0 on the Zip disk. When the "click of death"
problem happens, the read/write head fails to find
that track, which contains vital directory
information, because the head has become
misaligned. 

The cause for that misalignment? 

"The drive and disk are not extremely sturdy," the
source said. "They're not flimsy, but people like to
carry them around, and depending on how your car
rides, after six to eight months, you might get the
problem." 

The source also said that dropping the drive,
exposing it to the electromagnetism of a computer
monitor, and other external factors could cause the
misalignment. He noted that internal drives were
less susceptible to the problem, and stressed that,
apart from the sturdiness of the casing, the products
themselves were not defective. 

"I don't think the drives are faulty in any way," he
said, noting that he had just authorized the purchase
of 50 Zip drives for the company where he is
currently employed. 

The source said he also had encountered a related
problem reported in newsgroups: a domino effect in
which misaligned heads damage disks, which in turn
misalign heads of other drives, which then damage
more disks. 

"It's fairly rare," he said. "But it does happen." 
<<



Rubywand