>Yeah..that is the general idea. WOuld this solve the problem? In other >words, Is this a physical defect with the disk or a corrupt file system on >it that makes it unreadable? > >To: PowerBooks >Subject: Re: Zip problem >> >>Has anyone tried to revive these disks by degaussing them? Would this solve >>the problem?
I have to say, the degaussing thing made me laugh. No, that's not a problem. Is it just one cart of many you have, and the rest work? The "click of death" can be caused by many things, the click is just the drive head seeking and repositioning. Sometimes if a drive head has damaged the media (or if the media is otherwise damaged) putting the bad disk in a new drive, when the media has a resulting gouge or scrape or whatever that hits the head in the second drive, that drive too will be ruined. Or, it could just be a bad spot on the zip cart (magnetically) and the drive head is just moving around like it's supposed to when it loses its position, without damaging the second drive. The click of death, if you google, will point you to <http://grc.com/tip/codfaq1.htm> a good click of death summary page (among others). I have no idea about his "testing software", the TIP one is free and I've used it, it just tells you how many bad blocks have been remapped by the Iomega software to give you an idea of how the disk is doing. If you run it one week, and the following week there are even more bad (yet mapped out) sectors, then you know you have a creeping zone of destruction (bad media) and you should just toss it. I *did* once see many months ago a very nice page w/ photos where an individual was able to repair clicking-but-non-head-crashed zip drives with a simple screw adjustment (IIRC) - similar to our PB1400 CD-ROM drives, some adjustment was wiggling looser over time. I could not find that particular page in 5 min of googling, but it might still be out there. The WayBackMachine has this link with photos <http://web.archive.org/web/20010617020107/www.accesszone.com/clickdeath/> which at least shows you how to take it apart (there are likely plenty of other sites for this, too- but they seem harder to find, perhaps as Zip100's are getting rather dated and people who paid a lot for them new are dwindling in number. I suggest getting your Zip 100 drives for about $5-15 each if you can manage it. If you haven't heard this before, never ever put anything valuable on a ZIP disk as your sole copy- it's just NOT a very reliable media format. Luck, and don't give up on it yet. I would pop open the drive and see if it looks like the heads have crashed, if that is the case then give up (you might be able to determine *that* with just a penlight). Else, you might be able to repair the drive, or have simply one bad cart. Also, if you can put the drive on a PC, you have more options in the Iomega troubleshooting software than is provided in the old Mac versions, for testing/reporting condition/formatting vs testing etc. IIRC. HTH. Holler if something gets resolved. Brian -- PowerBooks is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PowerBooks list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/powerbooks.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powerbooks%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
