Having problems with the above and have tried to defrag it with no luck. I know some people on here have the same model I wonder if somebody could give theirs a try. I'm using diskeeper pro and the connection is USB II although the firewire alternative is no better.

Thanks

I've defragged mine with both Norton and the native WinXP app. What error are you getting?

Both Diskeeper and the native defrag utility in Win 2K start to analyse the disc and then seem to hang with no further progress, both work fine on the internal HD's. The drive is perfectly ok as regards movement of data but I'm wondering wether this problem precedes an impending meltdown?

I wouldn't suspect a meltdown, just some communications problem. But run a s.m.a.r.t. utility in the background at all times, just in case.

Smart Utility ? A bit more please Doug.

Try this link (http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddrive/158/). I downloaded SMARTdefender (http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/0,39023731,20275004,00.htm) for free off the IBM hd support site (my OEM drive was from IBM). But now that I have the Maxtor and a Western Digital, it volunteered to watch them, too. Norton also has a utility, but I never could get it to work.