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.

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. Usage in the context of a hard disk drive appeared by February 9, 1998.

Background

thumb|right|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

Iomega's Zip drives were prone to developing misaligned heads.

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".

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.

Hard disk drives

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. These sounds can be heard as the heads load (park) or unload, or when the actuator is unable to calibrate or locate correctly.

Notes

References

  • What IS the "Click Of Death"? at Gibson Research Corporation
  • Zip Disk Click of Death via YouTube