Even for documents created with Lehigh-supported software, recovery attempts may not be successful. We may not have the expertise or resources to assist with some kinds of file recovery and will refer clients to a commercial data recovery service. We may set a time limit for our data recovery efforts. Many people receive a false sense of security by holding a physical disk in their hands. Diskettes and zip disks are intended to be inexpensive and mass-produced, and are therefore made from much less reliable material than hard drives are.
Zip disks are much like microdiskettes, they just store more information.
If you insert a zip disk into a drive, and hear a clicking sound, there is little that can be done to recover your data. Data that was fine can be kept safely in a box only to be inaccessible six months later. This happens because the film in the disk where information is stored is not sturdy, and it tends to lose data over time. Portable zip disks and diskettes also suffer from spills, crumbs, dust, and exposure to temperature differences that a hard drive inside a computer is protected from. Hard drives occasionally do have physical errors, but these are very rare compared with the failure rate for diskettes and zip disks.