# OS 10.6.8 and iomega



## camerio1 (Aug 15, 2007)

Happy New Year !

I used to back my financial documents on usb iomega zip.
It seems to be no longer recognized ?
Has anything changed with the new OSx ?


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## eMacMan (Nov 27, 2006)

First off 10.6.8 is by Apple's standards getting a bit long in the tooth, which should explain why I recently upgraded to it from Tiger.

I vaguely recall seeing drivers for the Iomega in the Mac OS 9 extensions folder, which probably means that these drives do require special drivers and they may no longer be supported in Snow Leopard. As they would have been 16 or 32 bit drivers they will almost certainly not be supported in Lion or Mountain Lion.

That said I very vaguely recall something about these drives failing, and more importantly when they failed they destroyed whatever media was mounted at the time. As a result I doubt seriously if third party drivers have been made available for the tiny number of drives that still run.

If you can find the drivers in an earlier version of OSX you might be able to transfer them to the same location in Snow Leopard and they might or might not run under Rosetta.

Sorry I am not more help here but the days schedule does not include time for an internet search.


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## camerio1 (Aug 15, 2007)

First off, I never had any problem with these drives and since I had plenty of them, I continued to use them under 10.4 and 10.5
I have discovered on a french forum that "because of a conflict with UDF file system used by Iomega that will not be resolved ever, Iomega would continue to support OS older version but not 10.6 and forward." 
So 4 machines for reading and writing and 30 or so zip drive also are going in the dust bin.
Progress, is it always so progressive ... why something working well are always abandoned along the road, is it only a matter of money making ... ?
I was wondering if somebody had any experiences under the new OSx that would have made it worthwhile to change from 10.6.8
I have spent many many thousands of $ on software and computers that are still working very well, so I am worried that those will not be supported as well in future version of the OSx.


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## eMacMan (Nov 27, 2006)

More info here:

Click of death - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



> The phrase "click of death" originated to describe a failure mode of the Iomega ZIP drives, appearing in print as early as January 30, 1998.[2] In his podcast of September 18, 2008, Mac journalist Tim Robertson claimed to have coined the phrase in the early '90s.[3] The phrase was then applied to other drives exhibiting a similar unusual clicking sound usually associated with failure.
> 
> 
> Iomega Zip drives were prone to developing misaligned heads.[4] Dust inside the Zip disks or dirty heads caused by oxide build-up could misalign the heads, but in newer devices it was due to poor quality control and manufacturing defects in the drive itself. Magnetic fields could also cause the drive heads to become misaligned, as the drives were not internally shielded from external magnetic fields. The heads caused the data on the cartridge to become misaligned, rendering it unreadable. The Zip cartridges also wore out, grew defects, or otherwise lost all four 'Z tracks'. If all four redundant 'Z tracks' were lost, the cartridge was unusable, since retail drives are unable to low-level format the disks.
> ...


Obviously you bought a drive after or prior to the lemon years. Given the rather small size of the Zip disks it is beyond time to move onto other back-up and storage strategies, and yes planned obsolescence sucks. 

Beyond that one of my personal peeves is that there is no such thing in the digital world as archival storage.

I know that anything more recent than Snow Leopard does not support any PPC software. 

If you have older Epson scanners forget about Twain Drivers or even Epsons scan software. You are henceforth stuck with VueScan from Lion on up. 

Problems also reported with various all-in one scanner/fax/printers but that is almost normal.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

I used an iomage Zip drive with 10.6.8 not too long ago - worked fine.

One problem I vaguely remember is if the zip disk is password protected - I don't think the password is recognized any more.
Not sure if I found a way around that.
What exactly is the problem reading ZIP disks?


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## camerio1 (Aug 15, 2007)

Thank you all for your insight, information ... and so on.
I am not having any problems with any of my zip disk on other computers except the one with OS 10.6.8
and the answer is that it is not supported anymore by Iomega after OS 10.5 on Mac.
As far as upgrading I will use flash drives.
Happy New Year everyone and thanks again for all your answers.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

WOW!! You sure got a long life out of them, but a good time to move to the much more reliable flash thumb drives, and they can also survive a trip through the washing machine and dryer. 

Besides the fact they're faster and hold 10-100x more data than any Zip, and at a fraction of the price for the amount of storage.

But OS X 10.3.x - 10.6.x don't need any Iomega drivers or software as it's built-in to the OS X.

You might want to try using a different USB port or with a powered USB hub and also check the formatting method the zips are formatted with, as it may be just too old for SL 10.6.x to recognize such zip disks. Or if it does, you may only be able to read but not write to them.


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## camerio1 (Aug 15, 2007)

Would you believe that the zip disks are showing up on 10.6 just fine when you connect the right USB line !!!!!!??????HIC!!!!!!!!*********
My mistake ... I was connecting the wrong usb line for another zip drive machine.
Happy New Year everyone and thanks to all for your advice.
I also got a flash drive in case the zip start to act up so my documents are all pretty safe now. 
Again thank you.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

camerio1 said:


> Would you believe that the zip disks are showing up on 10.6 just fine when you connect the right USB line !!!!!!??????HIC!!!!!!!!*********
> My mistake ... I was connecting the wrong usb line for another zip drive machine.
> Happy New Year everyone and thanks to all for your advice.
> I also got a flash drive in case the zip start to act up so my documents are all pretty safe now.
> Again thank you.


:lmao: :lmao: It's amazing what that darn Scotch, Gin, Wine booze can do to goof up some Mac OS X stuff from working. 

PS: I'd strongly suggest you use any thumb flash instead of any Zips. They served you well, but time to change.

Hey, is EggNog and Kahlúa still in season??


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## camerio1 (Aug 15, 2007)

And I cannot even blame it on booze ... I do not drink any alcohol of any kind, not even beer. I am telling you it is old age.
I bought a USB flash drive and it is all on it right now. 
So all ends well.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

OMG!! Not the old age thing, but it's sure better than some of the alternatives it can bring along with it - if one is still even living.

Anyway, enjoy your USB flash drive.


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## IllusionX (Mar 10, 2009)

I've had a floppy drive work on ML...


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## camerio1 (Aug 15, 2007)

Everything is working well now, it was only the wrong USB cable that I was connecting from another zip under the one I wanted to access.
You see I have two and they are on top of each other, the first one I had was only reading Zip 100, then I got some disk 250 with another reader. I always use the 250 now, but I was connecting the wrong one.
Getting old ....
Thanks for your response.


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