Expert Advice Sought

To All Cognoscenti,

I had a desktop computer built for us by a local outfit 22 months ago. It's
equipped with a Maxtor 6Y120PO hard drive in a slide-out cage. Shortly
after taking delivery of the unit I discovered that the tiny fan built into
the front of the slide-out cage was missing. An inquiry to the head honcho
of the outfit produced the answer that they had removed the fan as it was
unneeded because today's drives operated at high temperatures without any
harm. I felt uneasy about the matter, but who am I to argue with a
technician, right?

About a year ago our computer started seriously misbehaving. After much
pulling of hair a disk scan revealed four files with bad clusters in the
occupied areas of the partition containing Windows XP and our application
programs. Lately major problems reared their ugly heads again. One problem
was a badly seated memory card. The other, according to a disk scan with
CHKDSK /R, dozens of files with bad clusters in the occupied areas of the
partition containing the data files. I don't know how many because the list
scrolled off the screen.

The computer sits on the floor in our living room and no jarring has ever
occurred.

Question one: is the removal of the fan from the slide-out cage a likely
contributing factor to the repeated and increasing failure of the disk?

Question two: is the disk toast?

Expert advice from qualified technicians would be much appreciated.

Andy





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