I, too, recently (well, somewhere in the last year) had a drive go bad on me. 1st time ever. At 1st I thought it was a virus. I was getting slow boot-up, had files go missing, hang-ups and all the other usual problems. Except, if I shut down the PC for a few hours, things seemed to improve.. But it wasn't a virus. One day, I happened to notice that the drive was running hot (and I mean "ouch!" hot). I suspect that a bearing had failed in the main spindle (just guessing..). Immediately went out, bought a new drive. Managed to salvage most (not all) of the original drive. Next time I start getting erratic behaviour, I'm going to check the temperature of the disc..:-)) Cheers, Diolma