Going without my empeg for more than about 18 hours is cause for serious withdrawals. (First symptoms are shaky hands and irritability followed by a cold sweat and paranoia.)

And I didn't mean to suggest that empeg's technical staff and customer service is anything but top notch. I've had my player freak out once or twice (even had to send it in once) and Empeg's customer service is better than any I have ever seen. (Side story. I bet a guy at work that I would get a response to my emailed question to empeg within 5 minutes. As we were turning to run to the snack machines, my mail alert chimed and there was my response. Total time taken, about 1 1/2 minutes. That's what I call freaking awesome service.)

Here's what my man David Moss had to say on the matter:

> It is likely to be coincidence that this happened
> when you installed the 2.0
> beta. This could be a dodgy drive cable -
> particularly since 'bad interrupt'
> isn't common for drive errors. Have you tried the
> other connector on the
> drive cable?
>
> Let me know your address and I'll get a new cable in
> the post to you.
>
> If that does not rectify the problem then you
> probably do have a dead drive.
> I'll ask Hugo about it and see if he has any
> suggestions.
>
> Regards,
> David

Props to him and Hugo. (Oh... And Hugo... No Standoffs. What does that mean for the life of the drive that is still alive? Will it be dying soon as well?) So I'm still not totally sure on what exactly is broken. Cable or drive. (Though it sounds like drive.) Sounds like I'm going to be shipping my baby back to its homeland. But I still have one burning question. What will become of the music on the drive that's still alive? And what of the one that's dead? (It's hard to find good concert recordings of The Cure.)

Thanks for your overwhelming response, support, and help. This is one of the big reasons I love my empeg.

P.S. I take back any ill I said about 2.00 B3. Now I’ll just complain about 20 GB IBM laptop hard drives. >:)