Harddrive Woes

Can't it be replaced under warranty?

First check cables, connectors and proper jumper settings. I know it is simple but you would be surprised. I would also try swapping your IDE cable to the drive. When they are bad your drive will suddenly not be bootable anymore. (When swapping cables make sure you use the proper 80 wire cable as opposed to the older 40 wire cable or you will not get the same transfer speeds or operation). I would also use something like Spinrite 6 or just good old Microsoft Scandisk off a boot cd or floppy to see if it can scan. If those come back ok then I would run a disk scanning utility to make sure you do not have a corrupted boot sector or something like that before doing anything else. Be aware that you need to use a version of those programs that supports your partition type (as in NTFS if that is what you are using) If you think your Master Boot Record is corrupted then you can run the "fdisk /mbr" command at the prompt but be aware that this can also make your drive have to be redone if it does not work correctly. If all those steps fail together then return it.

As far as the make it isn't the first of choices if I had one. I normally just go with the western digitals but I know the first time I say that officially one of those will do the same thing As far as the rattle it is normal on some drives to hear a little but not alot. I have had drives that work like champs for years that had a rattle if I gave em a little shake while they were outta the pc.

Best of luck to you

k|LL3rCr0w