Have experienced more or less the same problem a year ago, had to replace a faulty 40 GB Maxtor HD in my Win98 SE equipped PC running also Amithlon on a separate partition. One day the HD started to make some strange "clicks" which lasted about 2-3 months and at the end the HD definitely died. Since then I have always had a redunded system, with 2 mirrored disks, it has been a pain in the neck already having to reinstall all my Win98 stuff. I originally thought it could have been a faulty drive due, may be, to the shipping which wasn't carried out properly and that might have damaged the drive while on its way to me. Anyway, I still have an A3000 which, after nearly 12 years is still running properly where one of the installed HDs is a WD. So, forget Maxtor!
