IOMEGA Zip disk

I have one but its not working either. maybe its a dodgy belt inside ofr similar, might be worth a look? Brian

I seem to remember a fault known as "The click of death" with IOMEGA drives ... maybe searching for that phrase will be useful ...

Your post took me back a few years - I'd forgotten about such things!

This any use to you?

I had a 5.25" floppy that had important data on it and realised that I no longer had the means to read it. Happily, I was able to send it off to a place in Cambridge (Cambridge data recovery) and they sorted it out for a small charge of £12 or so. Other data recovery sevices had quoted figures of £100 upwards, which seemed excessive. Might be worth giving them a ring.

Checking conversion services they seem to run at around $25 per disc plus postage to the US

If the worst comes to the worst there are plenty of 250's on ebay ranging from around ?10 to ?30. An internal would be OK as you could run it on the desk sitting alongside the machine.

With the known issue with these drives, it might be an idea to confirm with the seller beforehand that the thing actually works. Rather than being something they found sitting in the back of the cupboard untouched for years.

Apart from that, these things are unlikely to attract scam sellers, unlike say mobile phones etc. More likely well meaning sellers, who don't have a clue what they're talking about.

michael adams

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Follow up :

this UK seller sells 250's in bulk, as tested and working, the most important point, with an IDE connection. They offer free collection from you local Argos ( a system which I've found OK for low value items anyway). at ?14.49 each

Its in a bracket but that doesn't matter. Just sit it on the desk.

michael adams

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I have tried .. there is no belt its a direct drive motor.

USB interface seems fine ... its something electro -mech

That one isn't as its a100 ... I have 250Mb disks.

I have bid on an internal IDE unit ... just need one to last long enough to copy data Typical this drive bought to produce backups ... have them, but no way to access :-(

Thanks

They were the top of the range product when they came out .... mine is dated 1991 ... before that it was a 1.2Mb floppy only ... to have 250Mb was seen as excellent. It was 10 years before USB memory sticks hit commercial market

Pretty amazing that I now have a 32Gb card in my camera ...

Whwn I first worked in the computer industry - we didn't call it 'IT' then - at Apricot, our standard HDD was 10Mb. From memory they cost around £1000.

The link someone else provided suggested the clicking indicates the servo track(s) are corrupt on the media, so the drive can't accurately position the heads to read data.

aka "the click of death"

It wasn't the 'click of death' issue .... in my case initial whirs & clicks but then afater a while PC would come up with "please insert disk"

Not the disk as also tried new blank disks

Yup. The 'click of death' meant that the drive was going kaput, and no media would make it any better. Once the clicking started, the End was Nigh, but not necessarily immediate.