b4 I buy new one, why did the old HDD heads hit the platter?

[buzzinhornets]

I bought a west.dig. 40GB 7200 rpm harddrive about a year ago... was fine, partitioned after it already had some data on it (about 40GB full) and partitioned it into 5 partitions... everything was fine...

started noticing a sound like it was clickin on then off... but only once in a while...

left computer on while downloading movie from kazaa lite one night, woke up and the computer had frozen, and the drive was clickin like mad on restart... also, the first partition was unavailable... ran a west.dig utility, restored that partition, but was still clickin like mad... after every attempt to repair, I wrote zeros to it (low-level) but that could not complete, cause it would click every second...

So, before I go and buy a new drive... was I to blame somehow for it failing? should I only partition it when it's EMPTY with powerquest part.magic pro 7? Does it need a special fan? Or was it just defective?

these are my specs: do they have to do with the failure?
- Pentium II 400Mhz - 320MB SDRAM 100Mhz -

RIP WesternDigital 40GB 7200rpm HDD RIP -

Fujitsu 6.4GB 5400rpm HDD - ATI RageFuryPro 32MB VIVO - Acer 8x4x32 CDRW 8MB buffer - SoundBlaster 16 - DLink704 gateway/router - Bell Sympatico HSE - Dual Boot: Windows XP Pro & Windows 98SE - Epson Perfection Scanner 1250 - HP Deskjet 842C -

[sterno]

Probably just defective, unless you let it get too hot or something (7200RPM drives tend to run hot). Or if you moved your computer around while it was running, that's not a very good idea. In any case, if it's only a year old it's probably still under warranty and you could get WD to replace it or buy it back from you.