Zip disc catastrophe; PLEASE help!

[IamFogHat]

<p>Ok, so, I don't have it with me right now, and tomorrow I will tell you the exact message my computer gives me, but a little while back I was using zip drives before switching to usb ports, and long story short I got the &quot;click of death&quot; and cannot get to my data on one of my discs.&nbsp; I have been trying to research this and from what I've read it causes irrevocable damage to the disc resulting in a loss of data forever.&nbsp; </p> <p>Please, anyone who knows, is this absolutely true or is there any way I can get my data back?&nbsp; I had a lot of Word documents on there and I don't mind paying money for it, but I will be just crushed if that shit is gone forever.&nbsp; Please help!</p>

[JustJon]

<p>Is this disc in the drive or out of it?&nbsp; If it's in, get a paper clip, push it in hole and pop it out.</p><p>Try it in a different Zip drive&nbsp;</p>

[IamFogHat]

It's not stuck in the drive, it's just that when I put it in I get that awful rapid clicking sound, and after trying to open something the clicking will continue, and then it will give me a message, I can't recall exactly what it says but it won't allow me to open anything.

[hafast]

I just did a quick Google on zip disk data recovery and found <a href="http://www.iomegadatarecovery.com/zip-data-recovery.html" target="_blank">this</a>.&nbsp; Might help, or check some of the other results from Google.

[OGC]

<p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">Are you talking about the old zip drives that were made about 10 years ago ? The disc had a capacity of 100 meg or 250 meg ? </font></p><p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2"><img src="http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/8312/zipweb2fe603dei1.jpg" border="0" width="377" height="377" /></font></p><p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">If you are and you would like to try another drive, I am pretty sure that I have one in my basement. I can't say if it works or not but it is yours for the asking.</font></p>

[IamFogHat]

<p>First, thanks for your input, and Richg thank you, that is very generous.</p><p>I'm home now, so let me tell you what the message says that I was talking about.</p><p><em>The disk in Drive E is not formatted.&nbsp; Do you wish to format it now?&nbsp;</em></p><p>I'll lose everything if I format it right?&nbsp;</p>

[PapaBear]

You will loose everything if you format, but I'm guessing you already lost it. It may have been subjected to some sort of magnetic field.

[TheVHD]

Yes if you format it you will loose everything.&nbsp; I haven't worked with Zip Drives in a long time.&nbsp; I know that when I come across a hard drive that fails or can't be read I put it in the freezer for about 15-20 minutes and then take it out and try to read it again.&nbsp; Sometimes&nbsp;works&nbsp;sometimes not.&nbsp; Good luck bro.

[Doctor Z]

<p>So I just got back from seeing Sandler's new movie &quot;Happy Gilmore&quot;... HILARIOUS!&nbsp; Has anyone else seen this?</p><p>Anyway, I have to get back to playing my Super Nintendo.&nbsp; </p>

[ralphbxny]

Break it!!

[banditorico]

<p><font size="2">Do you have a backup?&nbsp; Obviously that's the best solution.</font></p><p><font size="2">Don't use your Zip drive, using it again may damage your zip disk some more.</font></p><p><font size="2">Find another Zip drive and try to read it.&nbsp; If the drive can read it you may be lucky enough to restore the data.</font></p><p><font size="2">Ontrack.com has EasyRecovery Pro, very expensive, but it's saved me a couple times.</font></p><p><font size="2">Runtime Software - www.runtime.org has a very good product.</font></p><p><font size="2">GetDataBack for FAT will work for you if you can read the disk, it's good a restoring data from bad sectors on the disk.</font></p><p><font size="2">I've used GetDataBack for NTFS, it was better than EasyRecoverPro.&nbsp;</font></p><p><font size="2">Or if you have the money, you can send it to one of the data recovery services and they can recover the data for you.&nbsp;</font></p>

[banditorico]

<p>Read Steve Gibson's FAQ on the click of death.</p><a href="http://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq8.htm" target="_blank" title="http://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq8.htm">http://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq8.htm</a>

[Wallower]

<p>I remember the click of death being almost like a physical virus. If you got a clicking disk it could break your drive and any drive you put it into. The drive(s) would then subsequently break any new disk that were inserted. The company I was with at the time went through a lot of drives that way.</p><p>...and the data was always lost on the disks. Sorry.&nbsp;</p>

[PunkMojo]

I hope it isn't an Iomega Zip. They have been known to do this, and your data is lost forever.