Since the true cause of Click Death is a physically, electrically, or mechanically defective Zip or Jaz drive, the only possible "cure" is the replacement of that drive.

Iomega normally warrants their drives to be free from defects -- of exactly the Click Death variety -- for a period of one year from your date of purchase. But since the Click Death problem has become such a huge and controversial problem for them -- not to mention tricky from a public relations and stock-holder perspective -- Iomega has extended their warranty policy in cases of Click Death and has said that they will replace Click Dead drives even when they are out of warranty!

Here's the whole story:

Steve recently appeared on a cable television show on the Ziff-Davis Television Network (ZDTV (now TechTV)). "The Screen Savers" show had a segment devoted to understanding this Iomega Click Death phenomenon. During the last third of the show, David Hellier, Iomega's General Manager of the Zip Aftermarket Business joined the show by telephone to provide Iomega's official position on the topic. To everyone's surprise and delight, David Hellier publicly stated:

YOU CAN WITNESS David Hellier promising to take care of this problem for Iomega's customers in several ways. The following two Windows wave files can be played on any sound-equipped Windows system:

 David Hellier Introduces Himself  (80k .wav file)
 David Hellier's Promise to Replace Click Dead Drives! (71k .wav file)

Since those wave files are short excerpts from David's statement toward the end of the show's Click Death segment, you may want to listen to the entire segment to be sure that David's promise was not taken out of context. You can listen to the show with a version 5.0 or later of RealAudio player (FREE Download)

 The Screen Savers Click Death Segment.  (14 min. lower quality)
 The Screen Savers Click Death Segment.  (14 min. higher quality)

(NOTE: Since David Hellier joins the show at 8 minutes and 30 seconds (08:30) into the RealAudio stream, you can jump there by dragging the RealAudio playback slider once the stream has started playing.)

What does this mean to you?

It means that you're not stuck with defective Iomega drives which should clearly NOT have failed in this fashion. It means that Iomega has agreed to REPLACE Click Death drives even if they are out of warranty because they know that it's not your fault that this has happened, and that it should not have happened to you.

As you might imagine, Iomega is not particularly eager or excited about replacing out of warranty drives, so you may need to "nudge them a bit" with your knowledge of what David Hellier promised on live public television. Here are excerpts from three pieces of eMail we've received that illustrate the point:

This instructional note was posted to one of the "Click Death" message boards:

Click Here for Additional Iomega Return Reports

So, as you can see, you may need to stand up for your rights, as authorized by David Hellier. But many people have reported success in having their old out of warranty Click of Death drives replaced after doing so.

Once You Have Replaced Your Drive(s) ...

The first thing to do is to absolutely verify that your replacement drive is now working perfectly. To do this you'll need to have a known good cartridge. You might consider purchasing a new one just for this purpose, or have Iomega also exchange a questionable cartridge for a brand new one since all cartridges have a lifetime guarantee. Once you have a new cartridge and a new drive, run our freeware "Trouble In Paradise" (TIP) program on them several times. Follow the diagnostic instructions provided by TIP to make sure that everything is now working correctly.

Now that you are equipped with a perfectly working drive, it will be possible for you to proceed to . . .

Since the symptoms of Click Death are the result of cartridge damage induced by malfunctioning drives, you must be absolutely certain that your new Iomega drive is working correctly before you attempt to clean up whatever damage which was done by the previous Click Death drive. To verify that your drive is capable of doing more good than harm see the "Once You Have Replaced Your Drive(s)" paragraph just above this section.

Our findings, and those of many happy users, have shown that just running our freeware "Trouble In Paradise" (TIP) utility with a healthy drive on a troubled cartridge will often completely remove all signs of damage and restore the cartridge's sectors to full health! In other words, when used on a healthy drive, TIP is very effective at keeping cartridges in good health. During this process some previously damaged areas may be relocated by the drive, but this is to be expected and is completely normal behavior the first time through. After a full TIP pass over the cartridge, the cartridge should function without any further trouble.

In cases of severe previous damage, and especially when the data stored on the cartridge is important and must be recovered for use, a true data recovery tool should be used instead of TIP (since TIP does not work to recover unreadable data and can not prevent a sector's spontaneous relocation before all possible data has been retrieved). Our own commercial SpinRite 5.0 mass storage data recovery and maintenance utility is the best tool available for this purpose.

So, once you have run TIP, SpinRite 5.0, or another data recovery utility (other than ScanDisk) on all of your data cartridges with the brand new healthy drive, all trace of the previous damage done by the Click Death drive will be eliminated and you'll be ready to use your Iomega mass storage products with complete confidence once again.

And finally, re-run TIP from time to time to keep a watchful eye on your drive and to be alerted immediately if it, too, begins heading into Click Death oblivion!