and there was another who mention seagate with similar results to yours - yet others swear by them - see? i really think that the manufacturing process for these can product bad lots rather easily without detection by even the most scrupulous qa process. next year, you may have no ibm failures, but the same number of failures on brand X, even though that brand has been good previously for you. you'll think that brand X is now slipping, and perhaps move to another, and the cycle continues. these are highly complex devices with lots of moving parts. lots can go wrong with 'em. On Friday, December 20, 2002, at 12:32 AM, Gary Waugh wrote: > Ah - I've had 4 IBM drives fail on me this year alone