Zip Disk Problems/Solutions Revealed (sort-of)

March 10, 2000 - After a long and exhausting search, I have finally found out a couple of answers as to why we have been having so many problems with zip disks recently. Okay, I found out a couple of semi-answers that Iomega barely acknowledges other than to spout off some stock answer to the effect that it is not a problem with their software. You can find those "precise" answers in the Zip Tips section.

It is also painfully obvious that Iomega support rarely deals with problems in a lab situation, where a zip may work on one of our Macs (8600), and not on our newer Blue and White G3s. I do have to hand them a 9.9 for effort, though, for their support forums, which have at least shown me that I am not crazy, and that other people are having the same types of problems. It just that you can only read so much of the line "We understand you are experiencing complications..." before you start to wonder who is answering these questions.

This all started about four weeks ago, when students started frantically bringing in zips that failed to be recognized as initialed and readable. Most of these disks were Mac-formatted, which was good, and most belonged to students who had newer Macs at home. Iomega's suggestion of installing the latest version of the Iomega software seemed to be not applicable on their end, as these were machines that should have the newest version already installed. So perhaps it was something that happened on our end, with our older version the Iomega driver (which is dated October, 1999). I have replaced the Iomega extension with the latest version, which may help. We'll just have to wait and see.

This is typical of an Iomega support answer. For example, a user posted a problem with the drive/disk making click-click-click (of death) sounds when inserting the disk. The answer obviously did not apply, and would frustrate a novice user to no end. To quote:

We understand you are experiencing complications with your Iomega Zip drive, and the installation software. You may be experiencing an extension conflict, which can be determined by booting the system without extensions. (Ensure a disk is in the drive during this process)We also suggest downloading updated software from our website at ftp.iomega.com/pub/english/maciom21en.hqx

This "click of death" would suggest a hardware problem rather than a software problem, and no where does it mention, in the original message, that the user was trying to install anything, and, in fact, a similar message states that this IS a hardware problem. What is a support person to do? Conflicting information like this is likely to drive a normal person batty, let alone a systems person with 40 Macs and 20 PCs with Zip drives to support.

Just about every support answer ended with "reinstall the Iomega software", or "This program, xxxxx, is not by Iomega, and therefore cannot be supported as an Iomega issue". I don't mind that fact that something may be outside of Iomega's scope, but doesn't the third-party software creator have a responsibility to make it work well with the operating system it's designed for? That is what they are there for — to make a product that enhances the computer, not make a critical part of it unusable or dangerous to data. I guess that I must be living in the past when certain software companies actually made an effort to make sure that their products worked consistently.

Don't get me wrong. I am a great advocate of removable storage media. I bought an external zip drive four years ago when they first came out. I waited through the terribly long backorder to get my neat little blue drive. I have thoroughly depended on my zip drive and 20-odd zip disks for the past few years. I think Iomega has the potential to really make great products. I just want to know why these disks are failing, and how to prevent it from happening again. What I don't want to hear is a bunch of companies pushing the blame anywhere but where it belongs.

–J

Jennifer Nieland is the lab coordinator for the College of the Design student computer labs and is a firm believer in the existence of little blue aliens who like to mess up the Master Directory Block and the Extents B-Trees of all those problem zip disks.