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Yvonne Chan

SAR users of Iomega's Jaz and Zip drives have reported hearing the infamous 'click of death', caused by malfunctioning hardware, which has sounded the death knell for data stored on their disks.

 The glitch causes Jaz and Zip brand drives and disks to stop reading data and instead make a loud, continuous clicking noise.

 Many users have claimed the glitch has damaged their disks and made their data irretrievable.

 Jaz and Zip are proprietary Iomega storage systems that use disks slightly thicker than a 3.5-inch floppy, with capacities ranging from 100 MB to 2 gb. The drives are available in internal and external formats.

 Zip and the higher-capacity Jaz are targeted at users such as graphics designers, who need to move large data files.

 Iomega claims the failure rate for Jaz and Zip products is less than 5 per cent, which is 'within the industry norm'.

 More than 15 million Zip drives have been shipped. One million Zip disks are sold per month worldwide.

 Incidences of Jaz click deaths have been small, compared with Zip reports, but this is likely to be due to the fact that far fewer - 1.2 million - have been installed.

 However, four Jaz users recently told PC Post their systems had failed about two months after purchase, although one of the users could not recall a continuous clicking sound.

 Three users said the malfunction occurred after the disk had stored 500 MB of data. Jaz disks come in 1 gb and 2 gb formats.

 One user said: 'We used Jaz drives in an SCO Unix environment using NCR SCSI [small computer serial interface controller]. But this Jaz drive would cause the system to shut down whenever we tried to read/write to the drive over 500 Mb.'  Iomega customer support director Mark O'Donnell said the operating system's complicated set-up could have led to an error in the initialisation of Jaz.

 Other users did not have such dramatic experiences, but reported a frustrating cycle of returning malfunctioning equipment and receiving replacements which would later break down.

 'I encountered similar problems with every single one of the seven cartridges that I eventually purchased,' a former graphics designer said.

 'The lost data on the disks cost me dozens of hours of work and several missed deadlines,' he said.

 Another user said: 'After a few weeks the drive doesn't work anymore . . . and after a couple of weeks I receive a replacement.

 'I have done this already four or five times.'  In April last year, Iomega recalled about 20,000 Jaz disks in the United States and about 55,000 disks in foreign markets.

 Iomega said at the time that defective disks could lose information stored on them and might not perform properly, although it was not clear whether the affected batch was susceptible to click death.

 The problem was detected in disks produced in Iomega's plant in Malaysia. These disks 'were manufactured with a batch of components from a second source supplier that did not meet Iomega's reliability requirements', the company said.

 Iomega believed that disks bought before March 24 last year were unlikely to be affected.

 Mr O'Donnell estimated that 'up to 90 per cent of the [recalled] products hadn't reached the customers'.

 The click of death has spawned a series of Web pages - some created apparently by disgruntled Iomega customers - that explain the malfunction and have message boards where users can post experiences.

 The Unofficial Click of Death Home page [www. thirdeyesp.com/isage/iome ga] offers a mailing list for updated information and a message board.

 The Unofficial Iomega Page [www.juip.com] features a click-of-death message board, but no other information about the problem.

 There are also newsgroups that focus on click death, including alt.iomega.zip.jazz and comp.sys.ibm.pc.hard ware.misc.

 Most of the messages are posted by Zip users, who outnumber Jaz users by 10 times.

  Industry analysts believe the problem occurs only to a fraction of Zip and Jaz users, but the affected ones are likely to be frustrated and speak out because they have lost data that might have been valuable.

 Computer consultant Steve Gibson said that, judging by users' comments posted on the sites and the newsgroups, 'Iomega is no longer reliably producing drives with the same durability and reliability that they once were'.

 'Recently manufactured Iomega products are experiencing a significantly higher incidence of problems - both immediately after purchase and after relatively short-term use in the field - than the older versions,' he said.

 Iomega had been working to improve all product lines, which involved taking apart malfunctioning equipment to find out what went wrong, Mr O'Donnell said.

 'We try very hard to feed back information to the people who design the products.'  Another frequent theme found in posted messages by Iomega customers is the lack of technical support.

 Iomega's Web site [www. iomega.com] lists no e-mail addresses for any individuals in its company and until recently its 'contact Iomega' section did not list contact numbers for its Hong Kong office.

 One SAR customer said: '[It is] impossible to get in touch with them in any way, as you cannot find an e-mail address, a phone or a fax number anywhere.'  The company said the page had been updated and now listed Iomega's hotline in Hong Kong (2197 7722) where customers could speak to technical support staff, who could help identify the problem.

 Iomega said it would replace out-of-warranty drives at no cost 'where necessary and appropriate'.

 It had no specific conditions, but evaluations would be on a case-by-case basis, Mr O'Donnell said.

 Iomega would look 'very favourably' at cases where 'if you, as a customer, are very unhappy with Iomega products and there is a problem with the way the products have worked', he said.

 The company also would retrieve data on click death disks for a fee. The charge per cartridge was US$75 for a Zip and $150 for a Jaz.

 The prices included the cost of a replacement disk, and charges were waived sometimes, depending on the situation.

 Information retrieval could be performed on most damaged disks, with 'very close to 100 per cent' of the data recovered, Mr O'Donnell said. 'It has to be damaged very badly for us not to be able to receive anything.' 



Click sound fatal crash