help with broken ZIP disk

[mdmx]

I have here a very important Iomega ZIP100 disk, which can't be read on my pc. The ZIP disk contains Files about my complete games collection and prices I payed for. It's very useful for me. unfortunately I have no backup, because I used ZIP disks for years and I never had a data loss. I thought these disks would be safe. But now I had learned a lesson: every data media could probably fail. :redface:

I have two ZIP drives: An internal IDE ZIP, which cannot recognize my ZIP disk and an external USB ZIP, which tries to load for about 5 minutes and in this time the pc freezes. It's not possible to access the media.

The ZIP disk looks just fine. I don't want to open it up, because it could get really damaged.

I hope somebody can help me. :confused:



UPDATE: my drive seems to have the CLICK OF DEATH. I have now 3 ZIP Disks which won't work :(