Well I downloaded WD's diagnostic program. It told me that the drive is wasted. It has between 2 and 9 "unrepairable" errors on it. I will be getting a free replacement in the mail from WD.
Then I have to start over, again, with all my CD's reinstalling windows and software. It's getting old.
I bought a 30gig in July. They copied my stuff on it. In September it failed and I got a new one for free. Had to start over though. Now that one went bad. I won't tolerate this much longer.
Let us hope this one works for a long time, like HD's are supposed to. It takes forever to reinstall everything and get it all configured the way I had it.
The good thing is this time since my computer still boots, I can back up some of my data before clearing it. I can save my address book and bookmarks and digital pictures.