Anyone tried these Click (of) Death fixes?

[3***@sneakemail.com]

Not having had a chance to flog this horse before, I'd like to ask
if anyone has tried the CoD fixes found on
<http://www.arcwebserv.com/jumpsite/clickofdeath.html> and/or
<http://www.accesszone.com/clickdeath/html/the_fix.html>.
How did it work out? Have you had to open the drive more than once
to "refix" it?
I have an internal 100Mb Zip (ATAPI, I guess) that earlier this year
decided to act up. AFAIK, just one disk makes it puke, but that one
has gotten progressively worse. I guess I'm lucky it lasted as long as
it did.
I'm about to build a new computer, and was thinking about putting a
"refurbed" 250Mb drive in that. ($35, with a 1-year warranty on parts
and labor.) I figured as long as the present computer was coming out
of use for awhile, I might as well apply the Golden Screwdriver to the
100Mb drive and see if I could correct the problem. (At least long
enough to get the data from those 100Mb disks onto CD.)
I haven't had a chance yet to compare the two techniques and see
what (if anything) they have in common. If Brad Miller or anyone has
done a followup about installing a spacer to keep it from recurring, I
wish they'd publish it.
Nothing much to lose by trying the "surgery," right?
Thanks for any insights.

--
Doug Clark

[Rick]

Post by 3***@sneakemail.com
Not having had a chance to flog this horse before, I'd like to ask
if anyone has tried the CoD fixes found on
<http://www.arcwebserv.com/jumpsite/clickofdeath.html> and/or
<http://www.accesszone.com/clickdeath/html/the_fix.html>.
How did it work out? Have you had to open the drive more than once
to "refix" it?
I have an internal 100Mb Zip (ATAPI, I guess) that earlier this year
decided to act up. AFAIK, just one disk makes it puke, but that one
has gotten progressively worse. I guess I'm lucky it lasted as long as
it did.
I'm about to build a new computer, and was thinking about putting a
"refurbed" 250Mb drive in that. ($35, with a 1-year warranty on parts
and labor.) I figured as long as the present computer was coming out
of use for awhile, I might as well apply the Golden Screwdriver to the
100Mb drive and see if I could correct the problem. (At least long
enough to get the data from those 100Mb disks onto CD.)
I haven't had a chance yet to compare the two techniques and see
what (if anything) they have in common. If Brad Miller or anyone has
done a followup about installing a spacer to keep it from recurring, I
wish they'd publish it.
Nothing much to lose by trying the "surgery," right?
Thanks for any insights.
--
Doug Clark

Dunno. The "switch problem" is a new one to me.

The problem is that these aren't the only 2 potential causes for
click death. Nothing will fix misaligned heads. As part of the class
action lawsuit many of the tested drives were found to have heads
gunked up with lubricant and oxides - again, no easy fix for that
one either. There's nothing really in common with the two fixes you
cited - one is citing a stop switch failure, the other is citing a
head mechanism tension spring failure. Then you have the cases where
the heads completely come off the mounts altogether. After that
there have been about a half dozen more problems mentioned as
potential causes of click death. Cheap drives, high speeds, no safe
cleaning method for the drive heads...

Again, if you are only having problems with one disk, it could be
the disk itself and have nothing to do with the drive. The disk
itself may need a long format, especially if it's seen heavy use.
The error correction routine on these drive is proprietary, relying
on a "spare sector pool" that replaces bad sectors automatically
while the drive is in use. If the spare sector pool is used up and
the drive is failing to successfully write to a disk, it will
retract the heads and attempt the rather feeble head cleaning
routine built into the drive. A long format may be in order as the
means to replace the spare sector pool. If you installed the Iomega
software right click on the drive icon and check the Format Life
information for the problematic disk.

[Doug Clark]

Post by Rick
Dunno. The "switch problem" is a new one to me.

Yeah; that one almost looks like it cures a symptom more than it does
the root problem. I was hoping someone else had proved or disproved it.

[snipped rest of *good* information]
I'm really having second thoughts about buying that "refurbed" 250Mb
drive. Right about now, the only advantage of Zip disks over CDs that I
can think of is "Zip disks don't scratch."
I do have Gibson's "TIP" and will use it again in the future. I guess
I'll just have to salvage what I can from that one disk, and then try the
long format.
I just recently installed IomegaWare 4.0.2, and after some poking
around, I found the Disk Life/Format Life info that you mentioned:
Disk Type: Zip 100MB
Disk Life Status: OK (95%)
Format Life Status: Long Format Recommended (30%)
Format Type: PC Format, 16-bit FAT
Manufacture Date: 99015

Also found out that it *is* an ATAPI drive.
Thanks for the info, Rick. So, is there any *good* news about these
drives? 8-)

--
Doug
**Replies via list, please, or must contain "Re:" and above subject
line or Sneakemail filters will attack. Death to spam!**

[Rick]

Post by Doug Clark

Post by Rick
Dunno. The "switch problem" is a new one to me.

Yeah; that one almost looks like it cures a symptom more than it does
the root problem. I was hoping someone else had proved or disproved it.
[snipped rest of *good* information]
I'm really having second thoughts about buying that "refurbed" 250Mb
drive. Right about now, the only advantage of Zip disks over CDs that I
can think of is "Zip disks don't scratch."
I do have Gibson's "TIP" and will use it again in the future. I guess
I'll just have to salvage what I can from that one disk, and then try the
long format.
I just recently installed IomegaWare 4.0.2, and after some poking
Disk Type: Zip 100MB
Disk Life Status: OK (95%)
Format Life Status: Long Format Recommended (30%)

That disk is WAY overdue for a long format. Check the Format Life
again after the long format. If it doesn't recover it's time to
consider the disk for backup use only. Like if the Format Life stays
below 65% don't consider the disk to be reliable. Roughly speaking,
you have a report right now that indicates 95% of the formatted disk
area has no bad sectors (that also means 5% of it does have a
problem) and 70% of the spare sector pool is depleted.

Post by Doug Clark
Format Type: PC Format, 16-bit FAT
Manufacture Date: 99015
Also found out that it *is* an ATAPI drive.
Thanks for the info, Rick. So, is there any *good* news about these
drives? 8-)

Ummm, you're asking someone who is a bit biased... After Iomega
replaced a COD drive 6 times I gave up and got MO drives instead.

[Doug Clark]

In article <***@rcn.com>, ***@rcn.com says...
[kaschnip]

Post by Rick

Post by Doug Clark
I just recently installed IomegaWare 4.0.2, and after some poking
Disk Type: Zip 100MB
Disk Life Status: OK (95%)
Format Life Status: Long Format Recommended (30%)

That disk is WAY overdue for a long format. Check the Format Life
again after the long format. If it doesn't recover it's time to
consider the disk for backup use only. Like if the Format Life stays
below 65% don't consider the disk to be reliable. Roughly speaking,
you have a report right now that indicates 95% of the formatted disk
area has no bad sectors (that also means 5% of it does have a
problem) and 70% of the spare sector pool is depleted.

Okay, thanks. (Now that I know what the report means.) I oughta compare
that to a TiP scan, and see how pooped it really is.

Post by Rick

Post by Doug Clark
Thanks for the info, Rick. So, is there any *good* news about these
drives? 8-)

Ummm, you're asking someone who is a bit biased... After Iomega
replaced a COD drive 6 times I gave up and got MO drives instead.

Well, that can indicate there's no actual good news, but if there were,
and it was good enough to impress *you*, then it must be good.

In the process of reading up on MO drives, I ran across this:
<http://www.karbosguide.com/hardware/module4d.htm>. The fact that it
mentions only 100MB Zips is one clue that it's a few years old, not to
mention the description of the drives as "stable." Hoo ha.



--
Doug
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[Eric]

Post by 3***@sneakemail.com
Not having had a chance to flog this horse before, I'd like to ask
if anyone has tried the CoD fixes found on
<http://www.arcwebserv.com/jumpsite/clickofdeath.html> and/or
<http://www.accesszone.com/clickdeath/html/the_fix.html>.
How did it work out? Have you had to open the drive more than once
to "refix" it?

[snip]

I'm not familiar with the switch issue. That's news to me too. However, I
did fix my click of death SCSI internal Zip100 drive. Please see my prior
post from about 3 months ago, http://tinyurl.com/39o65. The drive has been
working fine ever since! Every once and a while I'll write a full disk of
data to it, 95 MB, just help to keep it going. I should note that I was
able to lube the center rail from the top side of the drive after I took the
cover off and not from the bottom side as is discussed in the link in my
prior post.

Eric

[Doug Clark]

Post by Eric
I'm not familiar with the switch issue. That's news to me too. However, I
did fix my click of death SCSI internal Zip100 drive. Please see my prior
post from about 3 months ago, http://tinyurl.com/39o65. The drive has been
working fine ever since! Every once and a while I'll write a full disk of
data to it, 95 MB, just help to keep it going. I should note that I was
able to lube the center rail from the top side of the drive after I took the
cover off and not from the bottom side as is discussed in the link in my
prior post.

Excellent. The GRC page mentioned in the post referred to above may be
the only one I haven't looked at yet, but I'm assuming it has photos.
Photos of drive innards can be good maps for going into uncharted
territory with our Golden Screwdrivers. 8-D
Thanks much.

--
Doug
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