Iomega Zip Click of Death

Some months ago transferred a Zip 100 Parallel to a computer with XP. Just got the Click of Death on the oldest (7 yrs) disc. Found an excellent article on http://www.iomega.com/support/documents/30109.html
This resulted in carrying out a long format on the suspect disc, which sat at 94% for about 15 minutes, then got the message that the disc was kaput. Fortunately checked all the info was still on the main hard drive before carrying out long format. The Zip drive still works OK with other discs but will go to belts and braces and use a CD-R

Correct me if I am wrong and this is also going back some time now but didn't Iomega have a policy of replacing Click Of Death disks ?

Also correct me if I am wrong, but the real "click of death" was a head problem in the drive, which was terminal and wrecked every disk inserted.

And it had a very nice failure mode: if you put a damaged disk into a new drive, it wrecked that one too

Iomega had a policy of replacing faulty drives, because they wanted to stay in business. I think this case might be just one old disk dying.

We've had threads on this subject ... July and August last year, at least.
A search ("click of death" with Username "Heather P" will find them. Heather remarked something like: "A drive with the fault will destroy disks; a faulty disk might click".

Agree with you Graham, pretty sure it is a case on old disk calling it a day. The site I listed is dated 24 July 2002 and 24Jan 2003 so is current. The drive is 7 years old so must'nt complain, can imagine the reaction if I tried to get the disk replaced. The post was made to draw attention to the site I listed giving Iomega's instructions for this problem. In my records were all sorts of comments and instructions but the Iomega one's were by far the clearest.

You would probably be right there Godfather, seems more logical to replace the drive than a disk.

Hazy memory.

The "Click of Death" is the drive having problems. When it starts clicking - pay attention and go read about it.

One disk passing away through old age is par for the course (zip drives are not sealed units so their expected life span is shorter than a hard drive nicely tucked up away from dust and dirt in a sealed metal container).

Ignoring the clicking leads to really bad personal experiences that you learn from.

Click of death is not always fatal and can be disk related, not drive related. I have had it happen only once since I got my parallel Zip 100 in 1997 or 1998. I stopped the copying immediately and got the disk replaced - no problems have ever resurfaced.

You need to separate the fact that a disk that has failed (not by being damaged by the drive) will give a clicking sound as the heads try to seek data.

This is a disk failure and NOT the "Click of Death."

The Click of Death is the same noise, but is causing the faulty, mis-aligned or damaged heads to then damage the disk (and every disk inserted).

If it was the CoD then every new disk would give the same result, and often the physical damage done to a disk can destroy the heads in another drive (contagious CoD)

GRC com has some info on the click of death as well as a program.