You know, Dr. Jerry Pournelle (the Byte columnist and science fiction author - http://www.jerrypournelle.com ) has a saying that roughly goes like this - 90% of all computer hardware problems are cabling problems.

I know that several times when my own computer or that of a friend has gone, as we said it in the Nuclear Navy, "Tits Up," a cable (or even a card) has been loose. The darned things just seem to work themselves loose on occasion. Therefore, several years ago it became my policy to reseat all card and cable connectors before I did anything more in terms of troubleshooting for the computer.

Interesting that RAD would have drive problems so soon after my own Deathstar went whako.

Since replacing the drive, have had none of the boot up failures that were becoming more frequent, nor any crashes and lock ups that I can not explain.

Not home free, as I took the opportunity to reorganize a poorly structured system, but not done yet. Put fresh copy of XP pro in Disk I, partition 1 that is unfortunatly known by the newly installed OS as drive l: rather than c: That partition is still drive c: in the old OS which is on partition 2 of Drive 2, known as h:

I partitioned from the XP CD, and not sure why the lettering came out that way. Perhaps I should have disconnected drive 2. I did disconnect drive 3 which was running on Fire Wire, or the lettering may have started even furthur downteh alphebet.

The new OS has plenty of room and I plan to put the apps in carefully, keeping a diary, unlike inthe past.

Having problem with the free photo program Picasa from Google. I installed and then decided to uninstall and the uninstall process hangs and requires a reboot. The XP restore got me out of the problem. I have since reinstalled and think the program may be ok.

I have a Deskstar myself and have been nothing but happy with it. I've had it over 2 years now with no active cooling and a lot of abuse and its given me no problmes. I must have gotten lucky!

I have noticed similar connection problems on especially cold days that follow especially hot ones. Components and connections expand when hot and shrink when cold. Reseating usually fixes the small gaps that get created. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)

Most consider Seagate drives the most reliable.

Argh, the Deathstar. I was one of the unlucky ones. That's what made me learn about Ghost.

One time I had a stuck key on the keyboard that gave me similar symptoms. Took me forever to figure it out. Damn near replace the whole system first.

Woh, first look at you blog since before christmas and I am now having similar hard disk nightmares. Only on a Linux system with no monitor so am having to do the best I can over a serial cable from the laptop. Must try blowing kisses and talking nicely.