The sound of the heads being removed from the cartridge then being immediately returned is unmistakable, and should never occur during normal use with a healthy drive and cartridge. Iomega drives are designed to do this as a last resort measure when they have not been able to find, read, or write some of the cartridge's data, so this sound is a sort of early warning mechanism -- if you know what it means -- that things are not all right inside your drive or cartridge.

Most users who have lost their crucial data tell the same sad story of hearing "those clicks" some time ago "but then they went away and everything seemed okay for a while." They always say "if I'd only taken them more seriously..."

Yes, if only ...

If you hear any of your drives clicking, clunking, thunking, or thwacking, you know that something is not happy in your drive or cartridge!

As we said above, users have reported that prior to the complete loss of all their data, their drive made some of these sounds, but then whatever was wrong seemed to "fix itself" and everything was alright for a while. They always wish -- after things have completely fallen apart -- that they had taken the problem more seriously after their first warning and had done something about it.

Therefore, one of the functions of these pages is to help educate users of Iomega's drive products to help them prevent the spontaneous and catastrophic loss of all their data.

Our research has shown that even an Iomega drive's clicking (which as we said is a last resort during the drive's data recovery) is a late indication of trouble, and that occasional monitoring with a sensitive monitoring tool can identify trouble well in advance of even the first clicking sounds.

This is why Steve created the freeware "Trouble In Paradise" (TIP) utility for Iomega Zip and jaz drive users. It is a sensitive measuring tool that will tell you FAR MORE about the condition of your Iomega drives and cartridges than any other existing tools ... INCLUDING even our own SpinRite advanced mass storage maintenance, diagnostic and repair utility. (See the "How does SpinRite figure into this?" link for more information about the relationship between TIP and SpinRite.)

Even if you've NEVER HEARD a single click from any of your Iomega drives, we therefore STRONGLY recommend that you download TIP.EXE (it's only 46k) and use it periodically to verify that your drives and cartridges are not in any early stages of Click Death failure.