Re: Zip Drive Delayed Write Failure - need help

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:44:59 -0000, frodo@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
LadyDungeness@xxxxxxxx wrote:

I'm going to take the Zip 100 drive out of my desktop tower. I'll use
the bay for my new DVD writer. So I'm copying my Zip disks to the
hard drive first. I'm getting "Delayed Write Error" messages on some
of the files; after that, Windows XP Home SP2 doesn't recognize the
files on the zip disk.

Sounds like the drive and/or disks are bad.

Can this be fixed so I can transfer ALL the data?

If all disks are bad, then drive may be destructively bad; stop
testing, try the UNtested disks in another good Zip drive, if you can
find one and the owner will let you use it.

it would appear that the drive is going bad, or the disk themselves are.
Try re-reading them if possible. otherwise you're SOL, sorry.

What ha said ;-)

The ZIP 100 drive has a history of failing over time, typically because
the heads get dirty or just fail. Usually you'll notice it, the drive
will start to make "The Click Of Death" (google for it, it was big news a
few years ago). This is the head retracting and realigning; if it does it
just once that's not bad, but if it continually does the click then it's
dieing. the www.grc.com site has a tool you can use to see if your drive
is failing [note you may need to put a COPY of wnaspi32.dll into the same
folder as the .exe you download; copy it from your \windows\system32].

IOmega and the LS-120 folks were happy to avoid a new post-1.44M
standard in the interests of propietary lock-in and markup, and played
that game until falling CDR prices swept them into the dustbin of
history. IOmega are now iPodding along, i.e. putting cheap small HDs
in expensively-branded retail-friendly external housings.

I think I joined the dots on "click of death".

Unlike PC 1.44M (and like Mac 1.44M), there is no physical disk eject
on an IOmega Zip drive. Instead, there's an electric switch that
"asks" the drive to eject the disk, much as a modern PC's ATX "power
off" switch "asks" the PC to shut down.

"Open the pd bad doors, HAL..."

When a Zip drive can't read a disk, it goes into a retry loop, during
which it ignores all external events, including your repeated pressing
of the eject button. This is generic disk-handling procedure; the
low-level code that actually reads the disk needs to be fast and
atomic (i.e. not interrupted) so generally runs with interrupts
disabled, and that means it will "lock up the system" when it gets
bogged down in a retry loop.

External Zip drives (the most common type) have a hole at the back
through which one can insert a straightened paper clip, to force an
eject. This is similar to the hole in the front of CD/DVD drives.

Most users (myself included) didn't know about that hole, so when they
were desperate to eject the disk, they generally did so by thumping
the drive on the table, hoping the momentum of the disk would "spit it
out". And indeed; it generally did.

The trouble is, that could rip the heads on the edge of the disk,
leaving the edge of the disk torn and damaged, and not doing the heads
much good either; they could be twisted to scrape every new disk they
see. The disk's torn edge could snag and twist the heads of a "good"
drive too... so you have the hardware "click of death" virus.

As I recall, IOmega had their ass sued off on that one.

These drives can't be found anymore, except from people like me that keep
old junk around for years and years. And no, I don't have any more.
Like you I intend to migrate away from ZIP very soon, even tho I've got 50
or more disks lying around.

It's the cost of the disks (both inherent, and as puffed up by
lock-in) that killed these devices. A small pile of 100M Zip disks
would prolly cost more than a new 4.5G DVD writer.

re: trying to clean the heads, I didn't see where that was very easy. you
can open the drive up, but the heads retract into a holder of sorts, and I
couldn't get them to extend manually. I intended to use a alcohol soaked
piece of clean white paper to try cleaning the heads (old standby). They
are very delicate, but since they were already NG I figured I'd try. But
couldn't get at 'em.

Yup. These drives exist somewhere between the crude robustness of
diskettes and the rarefied clean-room interiors of hard drives, with
high speeds and small sizes to match. I don't think I'd trust myself
to manually clean the heads, unless I had an approved cleaning disk
(if there was such a thing).

I opened up a dead external drive and was appalled by the structural
quality - very plasticky and crude, looking more like a McDonald's
give-away toy than something that cost three times as much as today's
DVD writers. I thought the class-action law suit may have been a bit
opportunistic (disks fail, shrug) until I saw the drive's insides.



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