[X4U] Drive about to puke?

[net kat]

I posted a few days ago about my Mini freezing when it's Boot volume  
- on an external FireWire 7200RPM drive makes a sound which I think  
might be parking or sleeping..the whole GUI freezes, and I have to  
shut everything down and reboot.

A suggestion was that I was exceeding the drive's capacity for  
thruput, but I've used this very same drive with a G5 doing all kinds  
of heavy-duty things, and never experienced that before..

Difference in this scenario is that the drive in question (a LaCie)  
is the boot volume for the mini..much faster than the mini's own drive.

Could this drive be giving signs of failure? Or could there be a  
corrupt setting somewhere?

thanks for any ideas!

nk