Hello! Please help!

I'm trying to set-up a digital audio workstation on an AMD K6-2 500.. I'm also fairly new to Linux, and have spent the last 2 months cruising from distro to distro: RH9, Vector, Knoppix, Ubuntu etc.. just trying to learn some stuff about Linux, and reading as much as I can. Finally found a distro that's perfect for my needs in DeMuDi, downloaded the ISO, burnt and installed perfect (almost - grub error 18, so partitioned a < 512 mb '/' partition and made it bootable) first time, really impressed, it's the first one that's given me a K6 specific kernel, tuned for multi media stuff. BUT! (enough of the rambling)..

I decided to try the data=writeback in etc/fstab for my ext3 filesystem, and the whole thing crashed. No probs I thought, install was really easy, so i'll just install again.... how very wrong I was

I tried another 15-20 times to install, each time the install crashes in a different area.. first time goes through to 2nd stage, setting up applications, and it crashes, next time it loses some vdu16 frame buffer or something in the first stage, next time grub wont' install, next time modprobe crashes, next time frame buffer vanishes, then install just hangs, then grub error 15, then installs without graphics support, next it asks me new questions which i hadn't seen in previous installs, and asks if i want to skip some chipset drivers, then crashes. Next time all the way through to setting up the apps no problem, but then crashes. It's so frustratingly inconsistent!!! Also tried cleaning the disk by zeroing the whole thing, and also reiser fs etc..nothing will get this install through...And yet, the first time, it went straight on - the easiest Linux install of any distro (even Ubuntu) i've seen...

Also, I figured i'd just go back to Ubuntu, but that now plays the same tricks as DeMuDi.....if anyone can explain to me what the frig is going on, or better still suggest how i can return to a working set-up I would be extremely, very grateful for a seriously long time to come...

Many thanks for reading - and hopefully advising!!!
Chris

I would low level format the hd or use dariks boot and nuke and start over ..of course the hd could be bad as well

solved the problem.... bought another ide cable and moved the cdrom of the primary slave position and on to it's own secondary master... so the drives have separate cables - was only expecting a speed gain for the hd - idebus=66 and switch udma66 on etc - but it turns out it solved all the problems and demudi just smoothly and quickly installed itself with no interfernece or problems whatsoever. smashing. ran hdparm -Tt to get the speed and it seems to be around 21 Mb/sec...

thanks for the reply