Thanks for the additional information, yoha! It did certainly look like a hardware problem, and I'm glad you've been able to confirm it.
I tend to go for very heat-sinky (e.g. LaCie d2/3) or (quiet) fan units (e.g. Maxtor OneTouch II FW800) myself: modern drives get awfully hot, and heat is the enemy of hard disks...
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--Dave Nanian
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