Since more than ten years ago the manufacture of Iomega hardware ceased, if your eGo, StorCenter or Zip cartridge will not respond there is no phone number to contact customer service for assistance with the failure. Below you’ll see what each failure really means and at which point continuing to try may cause additional problems.
Firmware, driver software and replacement enclosure options for Iomega are all long since discontinued as LenovoEMC also absorbed Iomega but then shut it down. In essence nearly every Iomega recovery request we receive is a drive that contains data, however the data cannot be accessed due to either a dead bridge board, or because the internal mechanical components have reached their end of life.
We see the Iomega eGo and Prestige portable devices on our desk far more than any other Iomega device with failures of the disk being rare. The 2.5-inch hard drive inside each unit is a standard component behind a USB bridge board, and it is the bridge that fails. This typically occurs when the connection is disrupted at the connector, the power regulator goes bad, or just gets old. All of these failures have the same symptom: the drive is dead and silent; or mounts briefly and then disappears again; or in some cases Windows will offer you the opportunity to format it.
The cost of the practical test is nothing; try a different cable and a different port and see if it works, and listen to the drive. If a drive is spinning up (quietly) and does not appear in the list of drives then there is something wrong with your bridge. If a drive is clicking/ticking/spinning up and then going back down, this will point to an issue with the mechanical side; that drive should be removed from the system and left alone.
The StorCenter and ix-series devices are compact Linux-based NAS devices using a proprietary web interface to manage standard software RAID. Typically when an internal component of the device (i.e., power supply, motherboard, etc.) fails or in some cases due to a failed firmware update, the disk(s) contained within remain unharmed. In this case the RAID array can be reassembled outside of the original enclosure. Since these devices use standard mdadm RAID formatting, typically a dead hardware device will result in less of a challenge for data recovery compared to what may be perceived through its web interface.
What makes it difficult is a rebuild. If the unit has been left trying to resynchronise with a failing member, stop it. Please remove the disks if possible and send them in bay order, labelled.
Zip drives were perhaps responsible for one of the most well-known computer failures; the ‘click of death’ was caused by a read/write head becoming misaligned or damaged and striking the cartridge. This failure earned its reputation because when a failing Zip drive is fed a cartridge it can damage the cartridge and therefore damage the next Zip drive that this damaged cartridge is inserted into. It would be advisable to only test your valuable Zip cartridges on a known good Zip drive and do not continue to try to use a Zip cartridge if you hear it start to “click”.
Jaz and REV media are run through the same, good-quality machinery as the original and all images are taken during one controlled process. Since both of these formats are now obsolete, we do each cartridge once to get it correct and avoid multiple runs.
An external (Iomega) unit costs from £300 +VAT and an internal unit also starts at this price. The cost of cartridge media varies but costs start at £250 +VAT. A StorCenter (or similar multi-disk NAS unit) costs from £500 +VAT. All jobs begin with a free 48 hour diagnostics service and every customer receives a written quote. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. If we have to open up a mechanism to access your data then we will ask for a 50% deposit when work commences. This means that the final payment will not be made until we are successful in retrieving your data. When sending external units please send them complete and intact rather than having removed the disk. On some Iomega units there is a component called the “bridge” which is part of how the system identifies the disk being accessed.
First try using a different cable or port as well as listening to the hard drive while attempting to recover. If you hear your hard drive spinning quietly (no clicking) but see nothing on your screen in an attempt to access your data, then the most likely cause of your problem is the USB bridge board failure which generally does not affect the integrity of the internal disk, therefore recovery should be straightforward. If you hear clicking noises while attempting to recover your data or if you are hearing your drive spin up and down multiple times while recovering from a crash, stop now: pull the cable from your drive and do not reconnect. The mechanism inside your crashed drive is damaged further by continuing to attempt to recover; each additional time will make things worse.
No, not from the manufacturer: Iomega is now part of LenovoEMC. They discontinued production of new drives and enclosures, and therefore will never produce another set of firmware, drivers, or replacement enclosures. Therefore, if your Iomega drive fails, it’s a recovery situation, not a repair situation.
Typically this is due to either a bent/damaged head on the drive or the heads have become misaligned, so the head strikes the cartridge as it loads. This is particularly dangerous because a bad drive (e.g. damaged by a defective/failing cartridge) will damage every cartridge placed in it; likewise, a damaged cartridge will damage the next good drive that receives it. If there’s something important on a Zip disk, do not test it using other unknown drives.
Yes, usually. Both StorCenter and ix-series units utilise standard Linux software RAID under their proprietary interface. If the enclosure/controller died, we should be able to image the individual hard drives and rebuild the array using them outside of the original unit. Please remove all hard drives if possible and ship them to us labelled by bay number.
The cost of a service will be from £300 plus VAT for a single (internal or external) hard drive; from £250 plus VAT for a Zip, Jaz or REV cartridge; and from £500 plus VAT for a StorCenter or another multi-disk unit. After we have done your free 48-hour diagnostic, all quotes are then fixed and provided in writing.