That's interesting you don't like Maxtor. I bought a refurbed HP 7 years ago from ubid.com for a good price. Just for personal sfuff. It has the same Maxtor today and work great. The only time I had blue screen was when the room was warm and stuffy. I have been meaning to check into Acronis Image just in case. What HD do you recommend then. I am not even sure what my Dell has?
As a side note... I thought my HD crashed a little while ago. I was getting the dreaded blue screen at start up and the diagnostics said something about the hard drive...I dont really remember the error message. I ended up calling Dell Customer service, not expecting any help. They had me go through a bunch of steps that took about an hour or so using the Windows re-install CD and they actually solved the problem, no data lost. I couldnt believe it, so dont discount Dell customer service..