click of death

n. A syndrome of certain Iomega ZIP drives, named for the clicking noise
that is caused by the malady. An affected drive will, after accepting a
disk, will start making a clicking noise and refuse to eject the disk. A
common solution for retrieving the disk is to insert the bent end of a paper
clip into a small hole adjacent to the slot. Clicked disks are generally
unusable after being retrieved from the drive. The clicking noise is caused
by the drive's read/write head bumping against its movement stops when it
fails to find track 0 on the disk, causing the head to become misaligned.
This can happen when the drive has been subjected to a physical shock, or
when the disk is exposed to an electromagnetic field, such as that of the
CRT. Another common cause is when a package of disks is armed with an
anti-theft strip at a store. When the clerk scans the product to disarm the
strip, it can demagnetize the disks, wiping out track 0. There is evidence
that the click of death is a communicable disease; a clicked disk can cause
the read/write head of a clean drive to become misaligned. Iomega at first
denied the existence of the click of death, but eventually offered to
replace free of charge any drives affected by the condition.

