[X4U] imac and beach ball

[alexandre]

hi

i have a 24" intel imac ("late 2006") that has been working fine until  
last friday. that day, i took it to the local mac dealer to have the  
hard drive upgraded, from the original 250gb to a 1000gb. i decided to  
go for a samsung s-ata II spinpoint F1 with 32b cache at 7200rmp. the  
installation was done by the dealer. at another dealer, i bought a 3gb  
ram module, to bring up the total ram to 3gb, the maximum on the  
machine.

with the new drive, i thought it was a good time to upgrade to  
leopard… and since then i've re-installed leopard 3 times! on a  
regular basis, i'm getting the beach ball for about 15 to 20 seconds.  
the computer hangs (but i can still move the cursor) and then  
everything is ok again. for example, software update is downloading  
updates, i'm moving around a few windows and the whole thing just  
freezes… very, very annoying.

anyway, i did the following, and nothing has changed:
removed the new ram,
reinstalled leopard… 3 times,
repaired permissions
booted in safe mode
booted in single user mode and checked the drive
ran apple hardware test

so… i'm begining to think there is a problem with the new drive.

is there anything i can still do besides taking it back to the shop  
for a hard drive exchange?

thanks in advance

alexandre
17" 2.33ghz ic2d macbook pro / 2.0gb / 160gb / X.5.2
24" 2.33ghz ic2d imac / 2.0gb / 250gb / X.4.11