History (1999): Iomega Recalls Certain Jaz Power Supply Units

Quality control problems continue to plague Iomega.

After the “Click of Death,” (not to be confused with the company’s Clik! digital image drive) unreliable SCSI interfaces on Zip Plus, user complaints about certain Jaz cartridges, the Utah-based company is now recalling certain Jaz power supply units (PSUs), due to a potential safety hazard.

The company was forced to recall approximately 60,000 PSUs – 42,000 in Europe, 13,500 in the US and 6,000 in Asia.

They were furnished to Iomega by Cortech Systems, and the quality of the plastic casing is apparently in doubt. It can crack or separate, and even possibly open, exposing electrical circuits.

The 1GB or 2GB Jaz models in question date from after September 1, 1998.

For now, this incident does not seem too dramatic. It only involves a tiny part of the more than 2 million Jaz drives sold throughout the world, and according to its manufacturer, “we are not aware of any customers who have been harmed by an affected PSU.”

Even if Iomega was more or less forced to act after the US Consumer Product Safety Commision issued an advisory, this time at least the company had the decency to acknowledge the problem – a rare admission for the company – and offer a replacement free of charge.

In recent months, the company has been trying to improve its image, which has been considerably tarnished by all the technical mishaps.

Only a few days ago, we met with Paul Seaman, corporate PR manager for lomega International, and asked him the 3 questions that most preoccupy the designers of “The Unofficial ‘Click of Death’ Home Page” listed under the heading: “Unsolved lomega Mysteries”:

– Iomega claims that the cause of the Click of Death is a broken head or torn or erased disks. Why is it that many consumers are reporting this problem within one month (or even the first day) of ownership?  If the problem occurs, it’s usually right away. And the warrantee applies. Even beyond the warrantee, we replace it. We have improved the drive and the problem’s diminishing. We had more problems with Zips from 1996 and 1997. Quality has improved since.

– Why doesn’t lomega provide technical support without asking for a credit card? We’ve changed that in the US. We never did it in Europe.

– Being such a well known company with mission critical products (essential for daily operation), why doesn’t Iomega offer email technical support? Currently there is no way to reach !omega for tech support through email. There will be.

Interviewed separately by the magazine Maximum PC (March 99), Ted Briscoe, then president of !omega’s personal storage division – who recently left the company – gave some intriguing technical details about the Click of Death: “It’s head damage. Our heads – for a variety of reasons – become detached from the actuator assembly on the drive. As they try to reach the media, you get a clicking sound that ultimately could mean that your drive is damaged and needs to be swapped out. Some clicking is just associated with the normal performance of the drive, which has caused some confusion out there. People hear a clicking noise, but a lot of times it’s just the head going backup the load ramp and locking on. What you don’t want is to be down off the load ramps when you stick your media in – that could damage the heads. The problem was that there was sometimes too much force coming up the load ramp. You’d come up that load ramp and hit what’s called the crash stop on the drive, sometimes jarring the heads loose. We’ve implemented this ‘soft park’ so it brings it up slower and you don’t get that jarring effect.”

This article an abstract of news published on issue 135 on April from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.