Mac OSX zip disk issue with mpc3000

Hi guys,
i've made a few post in the past and find everyone here to be very helpful.Here's a new problem i've encountered:

I have a mpc3000 LE, and i have a g5 mac quad as my studio computer and a powerbook g4 1.33 as my personal. Running 10.4.9. Both have mpc program maker installed and have worked flawlessly.

I use a "transfer disk" that's formatted in the mpc, eject it from my scsi zip, place the zip into my iomega zip100 usb drive and the disk usually shows up on my computer, allowing me to access the 1st partition. Perfect.

Well, today my "transfer disk" stopped being recognized by the computer. Both. I tried 2 more zips freshly formatted in the mpc, and to no avail i keep getting an error message on the mac saying "this disk cannot be read by the computer.." it then gives me the option to "initialize" or "eject" or "ignore".

I then tried placing each zip back into the mpc, and i hear 3 clicks and i get a message saying "the disk is either damaged or not in a format that the machine can..please format..exc".

I'm very bewildered as too what has changed. I spent several hours today and even tried reformatting those disks several times.

Tomorrow i'll buy 3 more "new disks" and give it one more shot. I'm wondering is my usb zip drive bad? Has anyone else encountered this type of problem?

Thanks guys!

Your Zip drive may have the "click of death". That is when the read/write head in the Zip drive gets snapped (a loud click) and tear up all Zips you put into the drive. The disks damaged by this Zip drive may also ruin other Zip drives.

You can check your Zip disks by looking if there is anything not normal with it by sliding off the metal protection thing.

This has been talked about a lot on this forum. Search click and of and death and you can read more about it.

"click of death: n.
A syndrome of certain Iomega ZIP drives, named for the clicking noise that is caused by the malady. An affected drive will, after accepting a disk, will start making a clicking noise and refuse to eject the disk. A common solution for retrieving the disk is to insert the bent end of a paper clip into a small hole adjacent to the slot. “Clicked” disks are generally unusable after being retrieved from the drive.

The clicking noise is caused by the drive's read/write head bumping against its movement stops when it fails to find track 0 on the disk, causing the head to become misaligned. This can happen when the drive has been subjected to a physical shock, or when the disk is exposed to an electromagnetic field, such as that of the CRT. Another common cause is when a package of disks is armed with an anti-theft strip at a store. When the clerk scans the product to disarm the strip, it can demagnetize the disks, wiping out track 0.

There is evidence that the click of death is a communicable disease; a “clicked” disk can cause the read/write head of a "clean" drive to become misaligned. Iomega at first denied the existence of the click of death, but eventually offered to replace free of charge any drives affected by the condition."

http://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

Yeah your zip drive took a crap on you. Get a new one!

Hey guys so i bought 3 new zips and reformatted them first in the mpc as usual, and i'm back and running. I guess it's true that after a while the mac will for some reason not recognize the disks.
I'm ordering a new zip drive for the mpc as well as a backup just in case in repsponse to the 2 replies i got.
Thanks for the input.