What kind of failures are you experiencing - what are the symptoms?

yeah what are the symptoms? my i8000 HD ticked to death in under 2years, twice.. they want me to buy a 3rd w/o telling me what the problem was..

Hitachi DK23-series harddrives?  Look for a good Seagate or Hitachi/IBM 5k or 7k drive.  Also use I8kfangui (linked below) to control temps.

the first could have been a hitachi, the current is an ibm travelstar.. ticking sometimes starts on bootup, i don't think that has anything to do with a heating problem?

i'm aware that some ticking can be controlled by i8kfangui, but i've read it won't work for others.. the ticking isn't regular.. it comes and goes over irregular periods, but certainly towards the end it will be more frequent and the system slows dramatically, and then it simply stops working..

i'm just curious, how does operating temperature cause a HD to tick?

thanks for your help..

The ticking is the sound of the head searching where it is - when the hdd gets too hot, it affects the accuracy of the head aligning with the data tracks.  With the Travelstar, the Hitachi support site has a control utility you can download to set parameters on the drive that alters how it runs and makes it quieter.  Also, turn off the Windows Indexing Service to lessen the hdd activity.