Hi

My hard drive returns this

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Hitachi Travelstar 80GN family
Device Model: IC25N080ATMR04-0
Serial Number: MRG40FK4JBZWAH
Firmware Version: MO4OAD4A
User Capacity: 80,026,361,856 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 6
ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a
Local Time is: Sat Nov 3 11:50:23 2007 CET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

and with a couple of XP/ubuntu boots since yesterday, I got a + 15 load cycles (seems pretty decent, meaning the solution proposed in the links above do work):
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 046 046 000 Old_age Always - 543699