Magical Disappearing & Reappearing HDD

[patio]

I'm not in the UK...at least not today.
I was only illustrating you were assuming..........
But go ahead and hold mail.

[Accessless]

The Drive is a Maxtor 6V00E0 189Gb SATA HDD. The drive has just failed the SeaTools Long DST test [edit] & the short DST [edit]. Whatever that means.

I'd start backing up immediately...this means the drive is about to fail.
You may have a month you may have a day.

You should have bet on it, I would have owed you money. The drive suddenly died yesterday after nearly a week of smooth running.

Any ideas on what to do about Windows activation? As now I need to activate my copy of XP. The program says that my copy has been activated too many times (well duh its over 5 years old and seen its fare share of computer upgrades) and the phone line says: "Sorry there is a fault. Please try again".

[Accessless]

I don't beleive it! My DVD drives gave out as well.

[patio]

I just finished a repair for a customer where i had to image his failing HDD to another one to rescue what i could...
Imagine my suprise when i got the activation notice as well.
A hHDD is not a major hardware change yet i still got the notice.
I clicked on activate and chose activate but do not register and it worked fine.
If you are still gettting the prompt after trying this contact the Mothership...if you're legit it's a painless process...

Good Luck

XP Pro BTW with all updates.