Zip "click of death" figures released

Iomega reports that only 1% of Zip users suffer

Iomega formally announced last week that click-related faults in Zip drives affect "only a fraction of one per cent of current customers", writes Steve Masters.

While this is a small number proportionally, it translates to a large amount of users among the 12 million sales of Zip drives worldwide, and Iomega has not been able to treat the issue as lightly as it initially hoped.

Bowing to pressure from a growing number of newsgroups and web sites, as well as print media coverage of the so-called "click of death", which renders drives and sometimes disks unusable, Iomega has performed a U-turn on its initial attempt to ignore the phenomenon.

George Meyer, director of strategic marketing for Iomega, wrote to PC Week magazine last week to counter their warnings to readers not to buy Zips. He also announced, "The vast majority of Zip drive users report being very satisfied with their drives."

One industry analyst said you could expect problems with Zip products but that the numbers were insignificant enough to not worry buyers. Jim Porter, of Disk Trend, told one magazine, "The risk with removeable media is higher, but it's not even approaching the level that the average user needs to be worried about it. When you drive the car out of the garage, statistically you're not going to get killed going down the block. But you might.

"The distance from the surface to the disk head is between two and four millionths of an inch," he said. "That's a lot less than any microscopic dust particle. Anything could cause a problem."