it pisses me off when computer hardware breaks.. i have a 40 Gig hard drive here (Samsung), and Windows keeps saying it has bad blocks. CPU use hits 100% when trying to read some files off the drive. i've done low formats (zero writes) to it several times, and im still ending up with bad sectors.
i also have a generic 30 gig (actually has a big lable on it saying GENERIC, as if it were a brand name). it seems to work fine - until there is a lot banging sound from within the drive. then the computer seems to hang while waiting for the hard drive to respond. after rebooting, i usually get some "hard drive failure" error.
if anyone wants to donate a (WORKING) IDE hard drive in the 10-80 gig range, i would gladly accept it.