With my current interest in HDDs, I stumbled across this site http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/western_digital which is a HDD data recovery site. They go on to say that a burnt PCB is a common reason for failure in WD drives - not something I've heard of but fair enough. But then, I clicked on Samsung to see what they had to say and found that the page is strangely similar, listing the same 'common probmels' for this MFR. In fact, if you search for a HDD model like HD502IJ, another similar page is displayed, just worded differently. Also check out http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php and scroll down to Maxtor and play a few of the sounds - do they really play a melody if they fail??