i have replaced hard drives in past , this one is not old at all , and not giving signs of death , not fragging , no errors , no slow boots , etc and its water cooled , with the cpu cooler , smoked to many in past..... usually a failing hard drive skips at more intervals than just a Virus Scan. but i have a 2nd HD , i use to just to back up every so often. imo it has to be in the code , it skips a certain part of the disk , and also will not let fix - it defrag. can only use conventional windows defrag. maybe it is the drive, but its only a few months old , with wery low useage. 30 gig of used space and i never keep extra crap taking up un needed space.. i would chuck a new one in , just hate the reloads..... i use xp hate vista , and have reformatted enough to know windows will want me to call once again.