If SMART says fail, then that's pretty serious (although I have a drive that says fail in this OS and fine in that, so apparently subjective. Still the drive deffo had major problems and had to be replaced).

I would immediately try to back up the drive and replace it without dithering over whether there's a problem or not. The worst outcome is that a) it fails and b) can't be recovered.

I'll try the different rail idea but I think this gives me a good excuse to get another bigger hard drive.

Well it's gone again and I can't be bothered going into the attic to power cycle.

Is there a manufacturer of choice these days? Or is the standard pretty similar these days? I assume my drives spindown since they're in a windows server so do I even need a NAS designed drive?

All my drives are Seagate and this is first possible failure I've had. Drive is about 6 years old and definitely out of Seagate warranty.

Seen a Toshiba drive that seems the best £/TB currently.

Also, do people still like ebuyer? I probably stupidly started reading comments on HUKD and there's a lot of negative feelings towards them at the moment. Mainly due to their return policy.

I've never had to return anything to them I don't think, but I bought something off them for the first time in years the other day and it was all good, free next day delivery too. 

My only issue in the past (or annoyance I guess) is that the free saver delivery was always next day delivery but dispatched about 5 days after you order. Didn't make sense apart from them trying to encourage/force people onto more expensive options.

I remember having a right ball ache returning stuff to them about 10 years ago or more. Beyond that, can't really help.

I always tend to buy from them and I've not had any issues. Had to return my Nexus 7 and that all went fine too, not returned anything else. They're not as good as they used to be on price, but they're not bad.

Same all round for me. I've generally bought from there or Scan, since I can actually go to the Scan shop/warehouse and buy it there and then. Never had any issues with eBuyer either, I guess it could well be a very vocal minority.

Their merry Xmas photo was quite good - with the leader board on the wall in the background showing which member of staff had successfully rejected the most returns. They quickly removed that from their Facebook page.

Just bought a 3TB Seagate external drive that had a drive inside that (I think) costs about £10 more on its own. Put the 3TB in the server and maybe going to have the 1TB as some sort of spare external drive. Probably not an amazing idea as a backup drive if it's not reliable.

Is hard drives overheating a big issue? Because the 1TB was in the middle of a set of 5 hard drives.

Should I spread the bottom 5 hard drives out a bit better?

Either that or boost ventilation. # of drives does seem excessive to me, and an invitation to heat/psu issues. Are you just trying to eek out some extra life from old, small drives?

Depends what you class as small.

160GB (OS drive)
400GB

10GB (old server OS drive that has now been pulled)

500GB
500GB
3TB (was 1TB position)
2TB
2TB

I might get another 5.25 to 3.5 bracket and pop the 3TB at the top.

In terms of what's on the store shelves currently, anything <1TB. I think they're cheap enough that you could replace the 4 small drives with one drive for an overall cooler and less power-hungry set up. Though you'd have to copy (and possibly reinstall) stuff, which is never fun. You could still use the small drives in usb for backups.

If I have to stack my drives like that I make sure to put a fan at the front so air can at least get pulled through and keep them somewhat cool.  You might be able to find some software that will monitor/report the temperature of the drives.

Pretty much what I'm thinking. I've ordered a 5.25 to 3.25 bracket to move it up top and I'll stick a fan at the front and fan at the back in/out.

I put a high cfm case fan on the side panel and pull off front drive bay covers. Also I do not stack a half-dozen drives.

Where is your sense of adventure?

scattered across a couple dozen dead hard drives.

Dear North America, please learn the word 'of' and its use in context with the word 'couple' when referring to a few objects or things.

Yours faithfully,

The Rest of the English Speaking World.