Positive Note.
This morning I wanted to back up my Powerbook with Zip disks and use Diskfit. My drive started clicking on and off. I said to myself, " No not the click of death!". I was scared, because I thought that my Iomega Zip drive was acting up. I jumped to conclusions, and my Iomega stock is in the toilet, and now and one of my Zip drives is acting up. I almost sold all my shares this morning. I was pissed! I haven't had any problems with my two zip drives.
I took a deep breath, and called Iomega support line. I then told the tech I was trying to reformat some DOS Zip disks to Macintosh format. He told me that the "click of death" has been floating around the internet. They had some problems with a few Zip drives. The parts that were installed in some drives were inferior.
He told me, " Are there any magnetic fields around the Zip drive, such as speakers, monitors, or transformers?" I said, "Yes, my powerbook transformer was on top of the Zip drive. I removed the powerbook transformer from the drive, and the problem was eliminated.
This board had gotten me paranoid. There is nothing wrong with my Zip drives, and never has been. I just wanted to put a positive note on the board that most of the symptoms of the " click of death" may be due to this factor. No product is perfect, but the Zip drive is pretty close.
-Steve S. |
