Well, as promised, I fired up the drive again. It ran an Anubis Utilities test, top to toe, for several hours straight and did not report errors. I then powered down and the drive began to screech as it spun down. Now it has the Click of Death.

Most likely the oil is to blame, and that is what I expected at the start, but I suppose it is possible that the utility, which ran it real hard, did the old gal in.

Still ran pretty quiet, though, right until the end!