FYI,

Spotted Best Buy is selling Seagate 160GB Barracuda IDE drives (5 year warranty) for under $64 this week... Just in case anyone is considering doing an UTV upgrade in the near future and is looking for a new 120/160GB IDE drive(s).

According to pricegrabber.com shows buy.com offering the Seagate 160GB for $67.99 shipped.

On BestBuy.com the Seagate is now $84.99. There are plenty of other makes/models out there that will work for a UTV upgrade so please post pricing if you find a good deal on new drives. Probably 120GB/160GB or larger (Just remember UTV still has the 137GB limit).

Looks like BestBuy.com has the Seagate 160GB Barracuda IDE 7200.10 now for $63.99 shipped.

I have a UTV box (main family room) that just started freezing tonight and making a tick / tock sound. It also has a strange hard drive seeking sound. It turned itself off once and then tried to dial out for an update. I quickly pulled the plug, waited 15 minutes and powered the box back up. I got back to my shows and such, but the freezing and weird sounds are still happening. I think this is my first hard drive failure experience.

I've had lightning strikes that wiped hard drives, but never had a hard drive fail on its own.

Time for a new hard drive I suppose...

( Update: After an over night unplug, the drive started acting up again about 30 minutes after powering the unit up)

My local Staples has the Maxtor 160GB PATA - Model L01V160 on sale for $59.98. I will stop by there later today and try this drive in my family room UTV this weekend. This will save on shipping times buying over the net. Going camping now, so I won't get to install the drive until Sunday Night. I'll give the dial out software load a try first. It's the easiest. I'll report back next week.

One thing I do like about the "new" Seagate 160GB drives is they are "thinner" and lighter then the last Seagate 160GB I installed in my Sony UTV sometime ago (Still a 3.5 inch bay, just smaller all around. Should cool better...) . Must have reduced the Platter Count or something.

160GB a Platter... Crazy! :)