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Click of death

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Click of death
The click of death of a failed Iomega Zip drive.
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Click of death
Western Digital hard drive with click of death caused by a head crash
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Click of death is a term that had become common in the late 1990s referring to the clicking sound in disk storage systems that signals a disk drive has failed, often catastrophically.[1]

The phrase "click of death" originated to describe a failure mode of Zip drives sold by Iomega, appearing in print as early as January 30, 1998.[2][a] Usage in the context of a hard disk drive appeared by February 9, 1998.[4]

Background

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Inside of a disk drive with an actuator arm visible above the uppermost platter

The clicking sound itself arises from the movement of the disk drive's actuator arm that supports the read-and-write heads. At startup, and during use, the disk head must move correctly and be able to confirm that it is correctly tracking data on the disk. If the head fails to move as expected, or upon moving cannot track the disk surface correctly, the disk controller may attempt to recover from the error by returning the head to its home position and then retrying, at times causing an audible "click". In some devices, the retry process may be repeated multiple times, causing a repeated or rhythmic clicking sound, sometimes accompanied by the whirring sound of the spindle motor that rotates the platters.

Iomega drives

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Iomega's Zip drives were prone to developing misaligned heads.[2] Iomega received thousands of complaints about the click of death.[citation needed] Iomega stated on their website: "Like the predictable snap of a camera, a 'click' from a Zip drive is normal when a Zip user inserts or ejects a Zip disk, or when a file on a Zip disk is saved or accessed. However, repetitive clicking is a symptom of a damaged drive or disk."[5]

Iomega's Jaz drives were also affected—by early 1999, Iomega stated that the click of death had affected "fewer than half of 1 percent of all Jaz and Zip users".[1] In late 1998, an article in Macworld had discussed Zip drives and "all the horror stories you've read" about the click of death, while noting that "even a statistically tiny number of drive and cartridge failures is enough to spawn a dissatisfied subculture."[6]

A class-action suit (Rinaldi v. Iomega Corp., 41 U.C.C. Rep. Serv. 2d 1143) was filed against Iomega for violation of the Delaware Consumer Fraud Act in September 1999.[7][8] However, the case was dismissed following a motion from Iomega, based on "a disclaimer that had been included inside the box in which the drive was sold."[8]

Hard disk drives

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On a hard disk drive, click of death refers to a similar failure mode; the head actuator may click or knock as the drive repetitively tries to recover from one or more errors.[9] These sounds can be heard as the heads load (park) or unload,[10] or when the actuator is unable to calibrate or locate correctly.[11]

Notes

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  1. ^ In his podcast of September 18, 2008, Mac journalist Tim Robertson claimed to have coined the phrase in an article he wrote about problems with his Zip drives, and the phrase was subsequently repeated by David Pogue in Macworld.[3]

References

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  1. ^ a b "The Click of Death Ate My Data". PCWorld. January 15, 1999. Archived from the original on September 6, 2011. Retrieved September 12, 2011.
  2. ^ a b Festa, Paul (January 30, 1998). "'Click of death' strikes Iomega". CNET. CBS Interactive. Retrieved October 28, 2018.
  3. ^ Robertson, Tim (September 18, 2008). MyMac Podcast 201. Event occurs at 00:56:40 – 00:58:30. Archived from the original on August 26, 2009 – via Wayback Machine.
  4. ^ "PC: The Click of Death". St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg, Florida. February 9, 1998. p. Tech Times 17. Retrieved April 28, 2026 – via newspapers.com.
  5. ^ "My Zip drive is clicking". iomega.com. Archived from the original on June 24, 1998 – via Wayback Machine.
  6. ^ Myslewski, Rik (November 1998). "Gigs to Go". Macworld. p. 68 – via Internet Archive.
  7. ^ Wittenberg, Jeffrey D. (2012). Products Liability: Recreation and Sports Equipment. ALM. pp. 13–54. Retrieved September 12, 2011 – via Google Books.
  8. ^ a b Friedman, Stephen E. (2004). "Text and Circumstance: Warranty Disclaimers in a World of Rolling Contracts" (PDF). Arizona Law Review. 46: 677–678. Retrieved April 28, 2026 – via arizonalawreview.org.
  9. ^ Saurbh, Utkarsh (September 3, 2018). "4 warning signs that your hard drive is dying". Gadgets Now. Retrieved December 29, 2022.
  10. ^ "Clicking Hard Drive Data Recovery". gillware.com. Retrieved April 28, 2026. The heads will sweep from the edge of the platters to the center and back again without finding anything, parking back on their guiding ramp with an audible click before trying again.
  11. ^ "What Is an HDD Actuator and How Does It Work?". datarecovery.com. December 29, 2025. Retrieved April 28, 2026. When the drive's firmware detects that the actuator cannot reach its target or calibrate correctly, it may attempt to reset the arm repeatedly. This creates the rhythmic "click, click, click" sound often referred to as the click of death.
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