Even More Zip™ Drive Problems

10-29-01 - As many of you may have experienced, we have been having some difficulties with the Zip™ drives in the new G4s in room 446. While Zip™ drive problems are nothing new to the labs, these seem to be rather nastier to track down than most.

For over two months, I have been trying to isolate the cause of these problems and find a solution. What I have found is that there seems to be a problem with the Iomega software and MacOS 9.1, and perhaps a bit of a problem with the drive mechanisms themselves.

So far the symptoms I have seen have been varied, and difficult to reproduce. If I can’t reproduce a problem on demand, it is nearly impossible to track down what is causing the problem. So far, the problems reported have mainly followed a loose pattern.

Problem 1: Zip disks fail to mount and are not ejectable.

Problem 2: When the disk is forcibly ejected, the green ready light blinks continually.

Problem 3: After being forcibly ejected, the disk is no longer readable on other Zip™ drives.

Problem 4: The drive appears unusable.

These symptoms are curable, but sometimes recur.

Solution to Problem 1: Eject using a paper clip (get the lab monitor to do this).

Solution to Problem 2: Shut down the computer. Choose Shut Down from the Special menu. After a few seconds, turn the computer on. The drive should be useable.

Solution to problem 3: Bring the disk to me for repair. Depending on the state of the disk, this may not be possible, but I will try. I suggest that you keep up to date backups over everything on your Zip™ disks.

Solution to problem 4: Shut down the computer. The previous user may have had to forcibly eject a disk. Check to see if the green light is blinking. If it is, shut down the computer, then restart.

As to finding a permanent solution, this may not be possible yet until Iomega releases another update to its drivers. The last update did not fix any problems, but rather created more. We are currently running the last known good version of the Iomega tools.

Part of the problem may be a result of a change in the hardware of the drive themselves. For the last several years, since the introduction of the Zip™ drive, there has been a problem called the "Click of Death" that has caused disks to repeatedly click, trying to mount, or access certain areas of the disk. This causes the drive itself to develop a mechanical problem, which will in turn "infect" more disks with this syndrome. Those disks go on to infect other drives. This is a huge problem. I think that these new drives may have a built-in fail-safe that causes a disk with this click problem to quit attempts to mount if there are problems with the disk. This is why I can use older Macs with older drives to mount the disk long enough to repair it with a disk utility.

So, until I can totally isolate and cure this problem, we will have to deal with these Zip™ problems. Hopefully, a new release of the Iomega drivers will get rid of these problems once and for all.

-J

Jennifer Nieland is the lab coordinator for the College of the Design student computer labs. And so begins another episode in Zip™ Wars...