Resource-Central Hard Drive Dies with ICON

[eaiu636@rigel.oac.uci.edu (Leif Strand)]

I have a 100 megabyte external SCSI drive from the late Resource-Central.
The drive has never been what I consider normal...  It is louder than I
expected it would be (on account of the mechanism, not the fan), and it
used to, on occasion, emit a high-pitched whining noise for about 30
seconds.  Also, it is pointless to power up my system using the two
switched outlets on the back of the drive, because in such a case the
hard drive is never ready in time for the GS boot sequence (it "spins up"
in time, but it has to go though this sequence of sputtering before it is
fully ready for access).  It is my first hard drive so maybe I just don't
know what to expect; but in any case it has served me well for almost four
years now.

Some months ago I starting leaving the drive on continuously because
successfully powering it up had become like a coin toss, and I was afraid
if I turned it off I wouldn't be able to get it running again.  The few
times I had to turn it off (when moving from home to school or vice
versa), I was able to get it running again by turning it on and off
several times until it finally came back to life.

Earlier this week, as if to commemorate the death of ICON, I turned off
the drive, and now I can't get it running again.  The power switch works,
but the drive spins up very slowly and spins down very fast (instead of
slowly drifting to a stop like it used to), as if the drive mechanism
either isn't getting enough power or has some sort of friction applied
to it that it didn't before.  When the drive does reach full speed,
instead of going into the sequence of sputtering noises like it used to,
it just emits a quiet "chunk", and then very soft "ding" (much like a 
Lionel transformer does when there's a short on the tracks), after which
it spins down to a slower speed.  Accessing the drive at this point will
cause it to spin up to full speed again momentarily as the access light
is illuminated, but then it emits the two noises and spins down to a
slower speed, as before.

The most informative error message I've been able to get is "SCSI BOOT
ERROR" after typing "PR#7" (instead of pressing Apple-Control-Reset).
When booting from a floppy, the system just hangs indefinitely after
reaching the Finder.

Does anybody have any idea what is wrong, or more generally, where I
can get it fixed now that ICON is dead?  My sense is, or I should say
my _hope_ is, that the problem lies with the power supply and not the
Quantum mechanism, because the drive performed flawlessly for the
last two months, during which it was left on continuously.  Any help
would be greatly appreciated.

--Leif Strand