Quote Originally Posted by frogbeastegg View Post
When I connected the drive up in the secondary position it still worked and accessed ok. Some files were damaged, nothing outside of windows itself.

If I can pin it down to mechanical failure and prove it then that would be nice. It's a Western Digital Caviar model and they come with a 5 year warranty, of which I still have 2 years left..
I would bet on overheating. Most drives have a thermal cut out that will cause them to power down to prevent damage to the disk platens. You probably wouldn't have heard the drive powering down because a) WD drives are usually very quiet and b) you have a second drive which would drown the sound of the other one out anyway. I have had drives that failed that could be got working again for long enough to back up the data. Putting the drive in the freezer was another old trick (don't try that one).

How is your case ventilation? (Bear in mind that the weather is warmer here lately).