In '86 (in another life) I was a Systems Analyst for the deregulated side of GTE... I was also the MIS department, the LAN cable stringer-crimper, and I got to explain RS-232 to ex-PBX salespeople who trying to make a buck in the Brave New World... Anyway, my expensive 3Com server began to 'whistle' at about 10kHtz one day, and by the next morning it was screeching and warbling and quite obviously dying quickly. While it *was* backed up (the entire sales and marketing division was running in those 300 MBytes) I still had throughput goals to achieve, so I got the 3Com tech-rep out. By the time he arrived people were coming in my office to see what that awful noise was... I couldn't believe it was still *spinning*... let alone reading and writing. "Yup." He said. "No problem.." It was the absolute filter in the top cover of the drive. They offered to fix it... not under warranty!!! because it was not mis-performing... just annoying the hell out of all and sundry. Two whiny childish tantrums later... I got a new drive, which poor me had to format and restore to... all one Saturday... it was apparently a common problem w/that particular line of (Seagate??) drives. Cheers John