PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Choosing a Zip Drive

If, despite our discouragement, you decide to install a Zip Drive, keep the following in mind:

Click of Death (COD)

Zip disks whose logical formatting is damaged cause the dreaded Click of Death. When this occurs, the drive repeatedly seeks unsuccessfully, making a characteristic COD clicking sound. This problem can usually be solved simply by using another disk. However, if the problem disk is physically damaged, it generates the same clicking sound but also physically damages any drive you attempt to read it in. When they experience COD, many people immediately either attempt to read the disk in another drive, which simply destroys that drive as well, or attempt to read another disk in the damaged drive, which simply destroys yet another disk. A damaged drive literally has its heads ripped loose and a damaged disk has its edge shredded. Using a good disk in a damaged drive destroys that disk, which will subsequently destroy any drive that attempts to access it. If you experience COD, always examine the disk carefully to determine if it is physically damaged before you do anything else. For details about COD, visit http://grc.com/tip/clickdeath.htm. This page describes the COD in full detail and has a link to a free utility that you can use to test Zip and Iomega Jaz Drives for this problem.

Choose your interface carefully

Zip Drives have been made in IDE, SCSI, parallel port, and USB interfaces. An external SCSI, parallel, or USB model provides the most flexibility. ...