It's far more common with a dying hardware that it is a firmware issue (the drive electronics) than problems with the magnetic media. I agree, ditch the drive.
if your hd maxtor have no more of 3 years of life you can send it to maxtor and obtain one new,download the powermax utility and get the error code, it must send with hd to maxtor
sorry for my english
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: bronYaur on 2006-06-06 02:33 ]</font>