Always keep Zip disks away from sources of magnetism, one often overlooked yet devastating source of magnetism is Mobile Phones. They frequently produce electromagnetic radiation pulses as they determine their position within the network. The pulses are often much stronger during an actual transmission, especially in an area of bad reception. One single EMR pulse is enough to zap a Zip with the data completely destroyed and resulting with an unreadable ZIP. Other sources of magnetism are metal-detector scanners in airports. If you have to take a Zip through an airport place it in the tray before going through the metal detector. A source of physical damage is dust or grit entering the metal sleeve that protects the disk's surface.

Never pull the sleeve back and always keep the disk in it's plastic case. When you get error messages when trying to read a Zip, along the lines of; cannot read sector, Invalid media, cannot find file, invalid disk, etc. are all indicative of a corrupt Zip disk, and in most cases we can recover at least some, if not all of the original data.

Typical error messages from zip disks are;

• Disk initialization failure; track 0 bad
  
• Bad seek; drive error
  
• Bad CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check); Drive error
  
• Record not found; drive error
  
• The zip is not recognised
  
• clicking sound or the so called 'Click of Death' or Cod problem

Always keep Zip disks away from sources of magnetism, one often overlooked yet devastating source of magnetism is Mobile Phones. They frequently produce electromagnetic radiation pulses as they determine their position within the network. The pulses are often much stronger during an actual transmission, especially in an area of bad reception. One single EMR pulse is enough to zap a Zip with the data completely destroyed and resulting with an unreadable ZIP. Other sources of magnetism are metal-detector scanners in airports. If you have to take a Zip through an airport place it in the tray before going through the metal detector. A source of physical damage is dust or grit entering the metal sleeve that protects the disk's surface.

Never pull the sleeve back and always keep the disk in it's plastic case. When you get error messages when trying to read a Zip, along the lines of; cannot read sector, Invalid media, cannot find file, invalid disk, etc. are all indicative of a corrupt Zip disk, and in most cases we can recover at least some, if not all of the original data.

Typical error messages from zip disks are;

• Disk initialization failure; track 0 bad
  
• Bad seek; drive error
  
• Bad CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check); Drive error
  
• Record not found; drive error
  
• The zip is not recognised
  
• clicking sound or the so called 'Click of Death' or Cod problem