I'm not sure if by "sled" you mean the drive bay (as I refer to it): I am talking about the metal sheet on which the drive is screwed. Well when I rest it on the top of the EMPEG, the drive is still screwed onto the drive bay..... it's just that the drive bay is not screwed inside the EMPEG anymore. Works outside, does not work inside! I will try tests with the drive inside the EMPEG, but without the cover... maybe this would give a better idea of the problem? Could it be magnetic resonance of some kind? As for the few characters of garble in hyperterm when the unit starts up, it's not much (5 or 6 characters in 1/100th of a second at the end of startup sequence) and I remember it was not always there. Could it be related?