Okay well it seems that the Maxtor 40GB HD that they sent me in RMA has died itself a few years later. This time though it died 3 months after the warranty expired. I'm not going to pay $600+ for some expensive data recovery service, so what things can I try to fix it? I'm trying the freezer trick right now, but what else is worth trying? I doubt any of this will work, but I figure it's worth a shot. If none of it works, I'm going to unscrew it and open it up just to have a look-see before I throw it away. Anyone have a good link that explains the internal working of a hard drive so I can at least get an educational experience out of it? I've never done an autopsy before.

If anyone wants to try to figure out exactly what failed, here's what happened. Everything is normal until I hear this clickety-clack clickety-clack. Windows freezes because that's the drive it's on so I hit the power button to shut it off. When I turned it back on, the drive was still recognized and everything appears to start up as normal and no weird clicking sounds, but it hangs right before Windows starts and the drive seems to be in continual use. The strange part is that after I disconnected it, put in an old drive and reinstalled Windows fine, it still hangs the system the same way when I reconnect it as a secondary master.