[chris v]

I've been back and forth on this before, and can't find a long-term solution. USB zip drive won't mount a disk unless you shut down, disconnect USB cable, restart, and reconnect cable. I tried renaming the iomega USB drivers by putting a space at the beginning of the name so they would load first, as someone suggested here about a month ago, but that didn't change much.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to not want to restart the computer every time I want to mount a zip disk, but believe it or not, it's what Iomega suggests as a "solution" on their support site! It makes me want to take the stupid thind out to the driveway and hit it with a hammer until Ifeel better!

Question: Will the fire wire conversion kit they sell solve this problem? Or is there another fix?

Chris "Now where'd I put that hammer....?" V.

[Bugs Bunny]

Question: Will the fire wire conversion kit they sell solve this problem? Or is there another fix?

I am using the Zip 250 MB with Firewire adapter, and it works fine,
no reboots, no disconnecting the cable, and the disk mounts on the DT, first time, every time. Plus it's much faster than USB

[iPaul UK]

I think I spotted your problem. You mentioned that you had Iomega Zip drive extensions.. But, the Mac OS (8.6 onwards i think) has Zip drivers built in.. If you installed the Iomega software and drivers.. Then you end up with a major extension conflict. And you end up with exactly the kind of problems you mentioned. Remove those extensions, and perhaps the Iomega software too. And your problem will likely be gone.

Same thing happened to me with a USB Zip 100. Ditched the Iomega software, and it's worked perfectly without a single hitch since.

[chris v]

Off to Extensions Manager I go...

Still a little peeved by Iomega's "solution."

Restart, then restart, then restart.....URRGGHH.

I'll report back,

CV

[chris v]

dunno.... Turned off all the extensions form iomega that I could find and now it says the zip disk is password protected, and spits it back out.

Hammertime aproacheth....

CV

[zigzag]

My USB 250 Zip drive occasionally gets tempermental and spits out disks, but simply disconnecting the power and the USB cables, then reconnecting, always solves the problem, with no need to restart. Have you tried this, without restarting?

Also, I recall that when I first had the unit, I installed it on an iMac. There was an "iMac update" on the installation disk that screwed everything up. Any chance that you used it?

[chris v]

No, unplugging power and USB cords at the drive then replugging used to work, but as of yesterday, that ceased to function. It was how I'd been dealing with it prior to posting this topic. It's gotten gradually worse and worse.
As of today, there's nothing in the world that seems to want to bring the thing up at all. If I unpluhg, then restart, I can mount ONE disk, and sometimes, it crashes while copying. Maybe the drive's shot mechanically?

Has anyone who's had this problem resolved it with the Firewire kit? I'll spring the cash if it'll work, but don't want to go chasing my tail.

CV

[iSilver]

Have you tried connecting the zip to another computer with USB and seeing if that works, you may have a defective drive or cable.

[chris v]

I try not to bug people before i try things like the cord... I drug it to work a couple weeks ago, and plugged it into my G4 450 tower, which is more or less the same machine as the Cube, and couldn't get it to misbehave.

THEN AGAIN, I didn't have any iomega usb drivers installed on the tower, since the drive in it is internal. Maybe I need to be more thorough in rooting out the iomega stuff on my hard-drive.

CV

[MiniMan]

... or like Bugs said, upgrade to Firewire. I use the USB Zip 250 on my Cube with the Firewire adapter (Iomega's own one) and it's fine.

while upgrading to FW might help, you absolutely should not have to.
it's possible that the problem is not at all in the Zip drive, but possibly in your USB controller.
some questions:
-what comp do you have? (is there a firmware update for it?)
-do you have the latest Apple USB software?
-have you tried plugging the zip drive into both ports on the back of your computer? does it fail to work on either port?
-have you tried plugging other periphs (preferably another external drive, but lacking that your keyboard, mouse) into the port that your Zip drive is in to see whether they drop out?
-when your zip drive is on and working (reading a disk), do Iomega Drive Options and Tools launch? do they stop launching when the drive drops out?
what does Apple Sys Profiler tell you when the drie is working? is it different after the drive drops out?

[chris v]

Originally posted by ---:
while upgrading to FW might help, you absolutely should not have to.
it's possible that the problem is not at all in the Zip drive, but possibly in your USB controller.
some questions:
-what comp do you have? (is there a firmware update for it?)

Cube, and No.

-do you have the latest Apple USB software?

Software updater doesn't find anything except Disk Burner 1.0

-have you tried plugging the zip drive into both ports on the back of your computer? does it fail to work on either port?

I've been using it on a hub, and haven't tried the spare port on the Cube, yet. Not holding out much hope there, though. My printer and scanner are on the same hub, and work okay.

-have you tried plugging other periphs (preferably another external drive, but lacking that your keyboard, mouse) into the port that your Zip drive is in to see whether they drop out?

Swapped printer, scanner and Zip around on the four port hub, same result.

-when your zip drive is on and working (reading a disk), do Iomega Drive Options and Tools launch? do they stop launching when the drive drops out?
what does Apple Sys Profiler tell you when the drie is working? is it different after the drive drops out?

Not sure-- drive options just tells me there's no disk in the drive when one fails to mount, so I guess it's running okay.

System profiler sees the drive on the USB hub, even when it won't mount disks.

I'm thinking FireWire will pay for itself in another two or three hours of billable art time wasted messing with this....

CV