Recently there has been a lot of talk regarding ZIP drives and I thought it
important for those users who have not read the following to at least be
aware of a major problem.

The following is a cut and paste from ZD Net's Jim Louderback. This is his
news on Zip drives, particularly Iomega Zip drives.
If you wish to view the actual article it can be found at
http://www3.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/pcwo/0217/285453.html
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 Have you heard of "click death"? Well, if you own or support Zip drives,
you'd better brush up on it.

According to many reports from users, Click Death is a particularly nasty
infestation that can ruin your Zip disks. It can spread from disk to disk
and even bring your drive to its knees.

Click Death happens when an Iomega Zip drive starts emitting a sharp
clicking noise when accessing a Zip disk. For Zip drives, that's the death
knell.

Got valuable data on that Zip disk? Too bad, because most people who
encounter this click end up with unreadable disks.

Even worse, it appears that after disks have been trashed by Click Death,
using them in other drives can destroy those drives as well. Whatever
happens inside a stricken Zip disk apparently destroys other pristine Zip
drive heads--a vicious circle of destruction.

The only solution is to kiss your valuable data goodbye and replace your Zip
drive.

How does Click Death happen? No one seems to know. Even Iomega couldn't
provide any useful information. But there are almost as many theories as
there are victims.

Some seem to think it's a manufacturing defect that affects a small portion
of the drives. Others speculate that attempting to back up files without
selecting a particular file can cause problems. Whatever the cause, this is
not an isolated problem. There are a few Web sites devoted to this
problem--the most complete is at www.thirdeyesp.com/jatin/iomega/. Here
you'll find enough horror stories about the Iomega Zip drive to make you
swear off the format for good. If you've got valuable backups on Zip, better
copy them to something else soon.
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Dated February 17, 1998

Arnie Robuck
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