[GLLUG] Dying Hard Drives

[impact]

Alright, maybe I'm being paranoid, but I wanted to hear if you guys had 
any input on this...

Recently, many of my hard drives have started dying.  First it was my 
laptop making bad scratching/clicking noises, then I put my extra 20gb 
in a computer for some testing of a new cooling system, and it started 
doing an off-rhythm whirr noise (a bad noise).

I thought this was odd because it is a brand new drive that I got back 
from an RMA about a year ago and never used...

Then, I left for the weekend, leaving my main comp on (as usual for 
ssh/vnc access), and when I came back, it was dead.  I tried to turn it 
back on, and BIOS gave a bunch of errors about 2 of the 3 hard drives.  
These could possibly be due to heat (3 drives with about 5mm between 
them), but its odd it started all of a sudden...

Then theres my server, no real problems yet, but every time I reboot it, 
I have to hit F1 to get through BIOS because it gives a "Incompatable 
Slave Drive" (its the only drive attached). 

So again, maybe its me being paranoid, but these drives all started 
failing within about a week of each other.  Is there any chance there 
could be some sort of strong magnetic field around my room someplace?  
Is there anything else it could be?

-Dan Sherman