3 weeks later & I finally reformatted the disk the way recommended by Lacie (ie: partitioning instead of using the erase option in Disk Utility.) When I checked it with OSX 1st aid it came up with an error that it refused to unmount. I didn't finish checking with norton b/c it was taking too long. I'll do that & copy iTunes library back on in a few days & see what happens.

A couple of days ago, it was 43 degrees celsius here. Despite fans .... blah blah... the 160 gb drive kept skipping from song to song after 10-30 secs. Since I had a backup of the entire iTunes library on the 250 drive, I changed the default to it. Absolutely no problems. Played fine!!! What's more, I can barely hear it. It's so quiet. Yet everytime the 160 drive reads, it is noisy. Well .. if it can read! I had about 20 GB of other vid material backed up on there at that time, & it refused to read them. At least since I've copied those files elsewhere.

Is Hyper-kun is sponsored by La Cie ? lol