cant format... dead drive??

[ALLI]

it's a WD caviar drive, 160gb with 8meg cache. think it's the SE version or something like that.

when i open up partion magic it labels the drive as "bad" and when i try to format it says "error #4 bad parameter"

is this fubared? if so, will WD swap it as i was under the impression they were pretty much bombproof and had a 3 year warranty. it's just over a year old!

 

[ALLI]

never mind.

WD's "Data Lifeguard" seems to have fixed it. Added it as a new drive, set it up as non-bootable data drive and all seems well. Not sure how much I should trust it.

If it does seem to work...Is it worth swapping the drives around so that

c: (with windows installed) = 160gb WD Caviar 8meg
d: (data storage) = 250gb Maxtor 16meg

I'm assuming the Wd drive will be better as the main drive and the Maxtor as storage?

Can anyone suggest a HD benchmarking tool so I can compare the two drives?