Uh...this is scary, man...I had two IBM 'DEATHstar' drives fail on me within two weeks of one another (both bought at the same time), and there were a lot of other people with the same dang thing happening a couple of years ago...IBM kicked out a bad batch and didn't do enough QA and testing...I will NEVER buy another IBM product, EVER...doesn't matter that there was a three year warranty on the !#$@-ing things, I lost all data from an entire RAID-0 array because the first one went less than four hours after it started 'clicking'...by the time I figured out it wasn't just a fan catching on a wire (I had never had a hard drive fail before...all Western Digital before this), the array was toast...If hadn't just backed up my dissertation, I would have seriously contemplated suicide.
Anyhow, anytime IBM indicates that their drives might fail if not updated, it's a really bad thing, and should be taken very seriously, even if the drive is actually manufactured by Hitachi, because Big Blue Don't Have a Clue when it comes to testing the integrity of mass storage. I hope Dell addresses this through direct e-mails to their customers with the Hitachi model if indeed it turns out to be the same one...
Edit: Hmmm....does Hitachi even MAKE more than one model of notebook 7200RPM 60GB HD? Something is telling me 'no'
Looks like we could be in for a rough ride...I may email Dell tech support and ask if I should do the upgrade...?
