On Tuesday 14 March 2006 09:37, Reuben D. Budiardja wrote: > Yes. Whenever this happened, I had always unplug the drive from the > machine, plug it to another test machine and run Maxtor diagnostic software > from their website. Their diagnostic software showed that the drive is bad > and/or failing. This was true for all the drives that had failed for me in > the system (including this last one). We've had multiple Maxtor drives fail over the past three years. There's an unacknowledged (by Maxtor) problem with their drives, or with some of their drives, or with one of their plants. If you do some googling on Maxtor drive failure, you'll get a ton of hits. Our latest victim was just this weekend. A 200GB drive in a system with a 400w PS, an 80mm fan mounted directly in front of the drive bay blowing air across the drives, and an 80mm fan mounted to the back of the case to exhaust air. This drive became so hot when I ran diagnostics on it outside the case, that I wasn't able to touch it. We've probably had 20 Maxtors fail in the past 36 months. These drives were mostly purchased in a short period of time by a previous hardware manager - we stick to Seagate these days, which still offers a 5 year warranty - we haven't had to replace a single Seagate so far.