..Might just be a loose cable on the HDD's

That was my first thought. However, I've been there before a couple months ago, got permission from empeg to open the case and not void the warranty, and sure enough, the cable was loose - don't remember if it was at the hard drive or the motherboard end. I reattached the cable, and then hot-glued it at both ends to prevent a recurrence.

That worked pretty well -- as I type this, the empeg is sitting on my desk, disembowled, with the hard drive mounting plataform sitting on top of the case and both cable ends thoroughly hot-glued to their respective attachment points.

The drive does spin up and not make any bad noises. It just doesn't seem to read anything from the drive, as though the head actuating mechanism wasn't working. However, that would appear not to be the case because I can hear the heads seeking when I first power it up. The drive remains spinning until I pull the power.

The empeg hit the ground at the worst possible angle -- the shock would have been absolutely perpendicular to the axis of the drive spindle, which, of course, is the direction we're supposed to avoid.

It's not a huge tragedy -- worst case scenario 20 GB Travelstars are going for $75--$125 on ebay (brand new never used); and at least one internet store I have bookmarked sells them for $111 plus shipping. 20 GB is surely the "sweet spot" these days in terms of price/storage. And this will give me an excuse to re-rip my music and really do it right this time and get the tags right, and organize the playlists better, etc. I've been giving it a lot of thought over the past few months, and will do things quite a bit differently than I did the first time around.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"