Odd, in all my time wearing I have only had one HDD die and that was 4 years old at the time. It was my first rig with a hard drive (vs floppys or ram only) and it was back when HDDs were not made as well as they are now. Since then I have used both IBM manufacutured drives and Procom (Toshiba innards) drives. I have outgrown them before they have died. I have always put the drive in a case or enclosure. I screw it directly to the enclosure (with plastic washers acting as spacers between it and the case) and ground it to the case with conductive tape or a grounding strap. The enclosure is attached to me, and frankly I have some "shock absorbing" content built in around my waist that the case is tight against... Backups are a must. Also I use a rescue partition. THis is a small partition that is usually not mounted. When booted, without any user interaction, it will fsck's all the other partitions and then reboot back to your primary partition. It has come in very handy. But as for actuall HDD failures, I have not seen it. I strongly recommend putting them inside an enclosure. It has worked for me. Greg -- Greg Priest-Dorman
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