hmmm, so you think its dying. now i just wanna figure out what may have caused it so i dont kill the next drive so fast. i think there are 3 things that may have done it, which sounds most likely?

1. taking the drive out a few times:
i was pretty careful, but maybe i damaged it somehow? i may have pressed on the part that said "do not press" by accident.

2. using linux:
i've been using a PIIIX ide driver that says it supports ich4 chips, but my ide controller is an ich4-m. could any incompatibility here have damaged it?

3. movement while using the laptop:
i've been told all my life not to move a computer while its on because it will damage the hard drive and i really don't understand how a laptop can be used the way most people use them without the drive dying. could it have been damaged from me moving it while it was on? i guess the arm retracts after a read/write, so that the drive is less likely to get damaged if you move it around(do all drives do that or just those in laptops?), but what if it was in the middle of a read/write while i moved it? i often had to carry it around(very carefully) while it was on because my s3 wouldnt work in linux. i didnt disable the loggers and stuff so there's a good chance something was accessing the disk when it was being moved those times.