--- On Fri, 9/25/09, chris knight <[email protected]> wrote:
> BTW, The zip disk solution is not a great one. The infamous
> click-of-
> death is caused when you share zips between PCs and Macs (I
> had too
> many experiences with this in the 90s). I would avoid this,
> unless you have plenty of zips lying around.
The problem was caused by early Zip drives having too weak magnets on the
linear actuator for the heads. Outside interference could cause slight
misalignment of the heads, which triggered the drive's auto-realignment
procedure.
The click was the heads snapping back, moving out and snapping back repeatedly
when the drive couldn't read the disk.
In some cases the heads could hit the edge of a disk instead of sliding above
and below. That would tear the disk and the torn disk would rip the heads off
their arms. Torn disks would destroy good Zip drives.
Later versions of the drives used bigger, stronger magnets to provide better
shielding to the head actuator.
The earlier drives were also more sensitive to being placed on an angle instead
of flat or on the side with the rubber feet.
I always kept my parallel port and external SCSI Zip 100 drives flat and away
from monitors and other sources of magnetic fields. Never had a problem. I also
carefully inspected any Zip disk that had been in anyone else's drive. Takes a
bit of work to rotate the disk a full turn while holding the shutter open, but
worth it to ensure you're not putting a torn disk into a good drive.
When I worked at a computer shop I did see one run of internal Zip 100 drives
destroyed by a torn disk.
Some people have no common sense. One disk stops working and the drive makes a
clicking noise, put a second disk in that you know is good. Same noise, won't
read. Try another drive in a different PC, don't work there either and now
*that* drive won't read any disks. What next? Try *another* drive... IIRC one
clueless person trashed five Zip 100 drives and several disks - all started by
one disk that got torn.
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