I have a Dell Dimension 8200, which came with a 60Gb maxtor drive. After I had the machine for 13 months I started it up one day to get a message along the lines of - 'Dell monitoring reports that HD 1 is operating outside of normal specifications. Backup all your data and call Dell support immediatly ...' I called Dell and they said it needed replacing, and that the warranty ran out after the first year.

I bought a new HD and installed it, but kept the maxtor as a second HD. I still get the same error message about half the time when booting, but the drive still works fine, I just don't keep anything important on it. Sometimes I do wonder tho, how odd the error message started just 3 weeks after the Dell waranty ended!

Re tech specs -

Dell Dimension with P4 2.4ghz
1 Gig rambus ram
80 Gig Western Digital drive with 8Mb buffer (works great)
60 Maxtor HD
Sapphire Radion 9600 Pro 128 Mb
19 Inch Dell monitor (trinitron)
Logitech MX 700 optical mouse

I have only been using Maya for a few weeks, but it seems smooth so far.