thanks for the reply electro! i really appreciate it!
i'm gonna try and get one of those hard-drive cooling thinggies then... i googled these just now:
http://www.xoxide.com/hardrivcool1.html
thanks for setting me straight about the hard disk lifetime issue...
oh, and yeah, the logging thing explains why i never got it to standby, i do a lot of logging... i should have known better, hehe... =)
once again, thanks!