Having issues with a Seagate Barracuda and heat

I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 HDD (160GB) in my Shuttle SB95P,
which is nice...
Problem is heat, I think. The CPU and mainboard seem to be fine, but
as far as I can tell, the hard drive keeps locking up, requiring about
half an hour before restarting.

If I disconnect the HDD, the system will reboot fine; with the HDD
connected it will hang at the system check/ boot screen. When it locks
up, the mouse is moving around fine, but once I do a HDD task (saving
something, loading something, starting a program) it all goes down.
The HDD itself is not that hot - it is warm to the touch, but not
'snatch your hand away' hot - I'd say no warmer than about 45-50C.

Questions:
- is this a common problem for this brand of HDD?
- is this a common problem for Shuttles? (I never had this issue with
my last one)
- wtf can I do about it other than replace the frickin drive, and back
up all my stuff?

Thanks for the help