I had issues with a 20gb Maxtor drive. It did the same things. I used to hit the front of my case right where the HDD was and you could hear the drive start spinning again.

That worked every time it froze, but of course that left it dead in a few weeks. They replaced it with another one, but it has long been sent to the land of the backup drive.

My Western Digital Serial ATA drive, (120gb) lasted a week and two days before crapping out, but I think the Motherboard Serial ATA controller had something to do with it.

Its funny how 10 years ago Seagate was the crappy drive that Packard Bell used mainly. Western Digital and Maxtor both have bad records with certain drives.

Fujitsu Rocks!