Zip disks, Jaz cartridges and early external hard drives were all produced decades ago; their contents have usually been forgotten rather than copied. Therefore, it's clear why they arrive here: someone found a box and recalled what was inside.
As Iomega was ultimately folded into LenovoEMC and dismantled, there is no longer any way to obtain the firmware, drivers and replacement enclosures needed for Iomega products. What still turns up is a working disk that is completely unusable due to a bad bridge board.
Iomega no longer exists as a standalone entity because LenovoEMC absorbed it, and nothing new carries the Iomega name. In practical terms, that means that all Iomega devices arriving at this bench are old, and the information contained within those devices is typically also old. This includes archives, corporate records and collections of photographs from the 2000s.
That changes the character of the work. Most of these types of projects are non-urgent. These types of projects occur when someone finds a box in a loft or an office cupboard and finds that the sole remaining copy of some critical piece of information exists on a piece of equipment nobody has supported for fifteen years.
Most of the data is recoverable. The formats used by all of this old hardware are well understood. The basic storage mechanism used by all of this old hardware is also common. The problem lies within how this data is accessed (interfaces) and the specific family of drives used (drives that no one manufactures any more).
Zip and Jaz cartridges Old removable magnetic media from the 1990s. The click of death on a Zip drive was a legitimate, documented mechanical failure.
eGo portable drives Conventional 2.5-inch USB and FireWire external hard disks. Standard internal drives in Iomega cases.
Home Media Network Drive A single-disk NAS unit using a Linux-based operating system. Standard ext-based configurations, which can be read outside the unit.
StorCenter ix2 and ix4 Multi-bay NAS. mdadm arrays that will reassemble on another machine regardless of whether they are still housed in the original enclosure.
Prestige and Select desktop 3.5-inch external hard disks powered from the mains. Verify the power supply works before concluding the drive failed.
REV and Ditto tape Older, obsolete forms of backup. Both can be read and recovered; however, there is a physical limitation in accessing the drives needed to read the backup tapes.
The general belief with Iomega devices is that when the manufacturer stops supporting their products then the data goes too. It usually doesn't. Zip cartridges, StorCenter arrays and eGo drives all make use of known formats and standard magnetic storage; as such they don’t become unreadable simply because there is no longer an official way to access them.
What will be missing, however, is the ability to read these; this is a separate issue (and something we keep our hardware around for). If you are not sure what you have, please send a picture before sending your device: several Iomega products resemble each other and the format on the product is much more important than the name on the front.
We have the drives. Zip media generally holds up fairly well in long-term storage and the format is documented. If possible please send us the cartridges instead of searching for a reader.
Yes, and it was due to a physical failure. A clicking Zip drive may also potentially cause damage to its disk; therefore, do not continue to try using multiple different disks in the same drive.
You do not need the NAS to read the disks. These are standard mdadm arrays that will reassemble once another compatible piece of hardware is available to read them.
Generally. As long as you store your magnetic media in reasonable conditions, they should last a long time. However, optical media from that era will degrade far faster.
Cartridges and single media: from £250 +VAT; single-drive units: from £300 +VAT; multi-bay units: from £500 +VAT.