Yeah, I meant "drives".
Well, it seems it's probably the external dock or the USB cable. I have another external dock (single-bay as opposed to the 2xbay of the one that's acting up) and it seems to work fine. Still, it has given me an opportunity and an urgency to clean up my hdds. I want to get off all data I want to keep off the two hdds and then run some diagnostics (off Hiren's) and verify whether or not the drives are still good.