[xubuntu-users] partition intermittently mounts: dying hard drive or bug?

[JMZ]

  Hi,

My external hard drive tends, on occasion, to spontaneously unmount a 
logical partition.  Sometimes, the partition does not mount at all.  
Usually, going back and manually mounting the partition is fine.  I'm 
wondering: is this a hardware or software problem?  Something tells me I 
should just do a final backup, brick the drive, and just start over.  
Though maybe the current drive can be salvaged (it's only four years old 
-- do drives die that fast now?).


Jordan