The real click of death was when this was due to a catastrophic failure - say, one of the heads had become completely dislodged and was suddenly hanging loose. Then, every single cartridge you inserted into such a drive would be damaged. If you then took that cartridge and inserted it into a fully working drive, it had a good chance of subsequently destroying that drive.

Steve Gibson has a good site with historical information from the time when these drives were still marketed and sold: https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq1.htm