Re: Is my hard drive damaged?
 

A valid point, if you have access to only one pc download the drivers from dell first.

Re: Is my hard drive damaged?
 

I can copy the files over to HDD2 using command mode. I have the 80gb drive that came with the machine and a 250gb one I bought in addition.

By the way - I think this may be the root cause of the problem. The two are mounted right on top of each other and spin at the same nominal speed but are a fraction of an rpm different and this gives a vibration that increase and decreases about every 3 seconds. I think that vibration isn't doing the disks any good so I intend to change the way they are mounted when I've sorted this lot out.

Again thanks for the advice. what a great bunch the orgers are .

Cheers Keith