Free Factory Replacement Cures Death of a Jaz Drive!
Written: Apr 10 '00 (Updated Apr 10 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Jaz drives are a great concept.!
Cons: Poor quality in manufacturing, or, too fragile!
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| Schinjay's Full Review: Iomega Jaz family |
Help! I have Jaz drive "Click of Death! It’s choking me! I can't retrieve any of my data anymore! I'm dying! UUUUGH!
My Iomega Jaz is dead. It has succumbed to "Click of Death" syndrome. It was so young. So full of life. So full of my data.
But now, it is gone!
And if your Jaz drive gives out some very audible "clicks" as it whirs up to speed, yours will be dead soon, too! Just put a cartridge in and listen for those clicks.
It may not happen for minutes, or days, weeks, or even months. But eventually your drive will go. It will live with mine in computer peripheral heaven. The innocent stooge in a bad one-part play, that has no end....
The problem seems to stem from the fact that at some time or other, either your drive, or your cartridge gets damaged.
These components are VERY fragile. They cannot be tossed around like a standard floppy disk, or ordinary external floppy drive.
And once damage has occurred to either one, then "Click of Death" can set in at any time.
Once the damage has been done, the drive will begin to incorrectly write to the removable media. This miswriting can cause damage to the data stored, the factory media formatting, the positioning servos on the drive, and the factory management data stored on the cartridge.
Yowee! Death could come soon after this!
Now, it's not the clicking that is causing the damage! The clicking is a result of the damage. The clicking occurs when the drive goes to seek data, and can't properly locate it. Then it may extend its servo driven reading head in and out of the cartridge several times, trying to locate the data. Thus the repeated clicks.
It might seem to some that all this starts with just one lousy, bad cartridge. Because some cartridges, when put in the drive, seem fine. And after a while, they all seem to display symptoms of "Click of Death" (COD).
It gets very confusing because infected data cartridges can be carried to other Jaz drives, good drives, and you may or may not get the clicking on start up. But eventually the cartridge will click no matter what drive you use. This only means that you have a bad cartridge.
There is no evidence that infected cartridges carry the 'Click of Death" to any drive they come in contact with. But who wants to take that chance? Not me.
Now, what about this FREE FACTORY REPLACEMENT I mentioned earlier?
Here's what you should do. Call the Jaz customer service line at 1-800-MYSTUFF. Make sure you select "Customer Service", and tell them that you think your drive(s), or your cartridge(s), has the "Click of Death" syndrome. Mention that you heard David Hellier, Iomega general Manager of Aftermarket Business, say on tv that he would replace them for free because of this problem. Let them know how many drives and cartridges you think are infected.
They should stumble all over themselves to take care of you after that.
Our friend Steve Gibson has a plethora of information on "COD" at his site (GRC.com), and I suggest you check it out, if you think you and your Jaz family are infected.
Steve also has a couple of neat applications that can help detect, and then maybe, cure us of suspected "COD". Thank God for Steve Gibson!
The first one is free. (That's always the way it is, isn't it?)
His little APP called "Trouble in Paradise" will run a complete scan of your Jaz cartridge, and let you know what kind of shape its in. And it will be painfully honest about it.
His second APP (Ahh! This is where he sticks it to you!) is called "Spin Rite 5.0". It can be yours for $89, and by all reports it does an admirable job of helping to either recover the use of your data cartridge completely, or at the very least, recover as much data as possible, so you can trash the "COD" cartridge.
The program then helps to constantly monitor your drives operation to help prevent the misreads and miswrites.
We're taking a look at all of our Iomega products as a result of having this information available to us.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Schinjay
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Member: Steve Schindler
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 58 members
About Me:
Steve Schindler writes his informative and humorous "Schindler's Cyber List" for epinions.com.
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