You can download WD's latest diagnostics and test the drive to learn if it is either about to fail or not the source of the problem. Go to www.westerndigital.com and navigate to the download page.  They have a new diagnostic executable that runs in windows.

I've had good luck with WD's, but did have a 2-month old 3200JD (ATA) fail on me at 2 months.  I ran the WD diagnostics, notified WD of the error code, and they sent me a new one.


Peter <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>My new (2 months) Western Digital WD3200JD SATA drive is starting to fail. I
>don't know for sure if it is the drive or the SATA interface on my
>motherboard. The boot drive is an ATA drive and continues to work fine. The
>SATA is my data drive. After a boot, the SATA drive works fine, but then it
>may suddenly disappear! Disk manager shows no drive present. Device manger
>says that the SATA interface is working fine. Only a reboot will fix this
>situation.
>
>Another computer user I know in town just got a new computer for himself and
>installed a SATA drive. He had some lockup problems that he described to me.
>It sounded very much like the hard drive interface or hard drive was
>failing. He temporarily replaced the drive with his old ATA drive, and all
>lockup problems went away.
>
>My question to the list is to find out how prevalent SATA failure may be.
>Are the drives prone to failure, or is it the controller on the motherboard
>that is the culprit? I suspect the drive, but till I can run further
>analysis no conclusion can be made. Please share any feedback on SATA that
>you may have.
>
>Thank you,
>


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