Hello, Well not quite, but is sure sounded like it was trying to escape! I was running netscape with several windows open (probably not hitting swap) and suddenly the normal brrrrrrrp brrrp type sounds that comes from my hard drive chaged to a loud and alarming RRRRRRRIP WHAK RRRRRRRRIP WHAK this cycle repeated from about 25 seconds. The system was pretty well locked up at this point, I could move the mouse but KDE was locked tight. I hit the reset switch and then after the bios screen I got a message that the HD was not ready and that I should insert a floppy if I wanted to boot. :-( Didn't want to do that so I hit the power switch and let the thing sit for a minute then tried it again. This time the system came up normally, fsck made some repairs, but it didn't seem like it did anything more than it has on a couple of other occassions after the power has gone out unexpectedly. Anyhow, I am using the system now and it seems fine. Any ideas what could have caused this? Is my new hard drive on the fast track to the trash heap? Or could I have simply hit a nasty bug is some bit of software and it through my drive into convulsions? BTW I did backup my data and some config files. The drive: 30GB EIDE ULTRA-ATA 66 3.5LP QUANTUM FIREBALL Plus LM [root@crank david]# hdparm /dev/hda /dev/hda: multcount = 16 (on) I/O support = 0 (default 16-bit) unmaskirq = 0 (off) using_dma = 1 (on) keepsettings = 0 (off) nowerr = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 8 (on) geometry = 3649/255/63, sectors = 58633344, start = 0 Thanks Much David Nelson
