I am in desperate need of new ideas!
I'm trying to install linux redhat 7.0 on a system running an ABIT VP6 main board with 2 PIII 700Mhz processors, 256 ram and a 40Gig IDE HDD.

Everything goes fine through partitioning the drive, but the install always dies when it is either formatting the partitions or writing to the HDD.

I have tried several versions of different Unix flavors (NetBSD, FreeBSD, Redhat) and always the same thing... The install dies on me half way though. The only sucessful install so far has been Win98 SE, which doesn't help me any because I NEED the system to be a LINUX REDHAT SERVER (please don't tell me not to use redhat)

I know Redhat will run on the machine because I've taken an old 1 GIG drive and with RH on it and booted the machine sucessfuly.

what I've tried so far:
Installing from CD (Crashes half way through)
Installing on a different system on the 40G HDD (other system won't recognise the drive)
Using DRIVE COPY to copy Redhat from 1 gig HDD mentioned above (PQ magic won't let me resize the partitions)
Used the RAID controller on the Main Board to copy drives (PQ Partition Magic refuses to let me resize partitions)
booting with 1 gig drive and copying all files to 40 gig drive (crashed computer and even fscking the drive won't make it boot again)

Any ideas are appreciated.

Jumper the 40Gb drive as master and connect it to the main Primary IDE connector (not RAID). Then boot to the drive vendor's installation floppy (MaxBlast for Maxtor, Drive Fitness Test for IBM, Data LifeGuard for WD). Run all the diagnostics, including write testing (which will also low level format the drive).

If everything checks out okay, go to the Abit site and see if there is a BIOS update and install it.

Then try reinstalling with the drive connected to the main Primary IDE port, not a RAID port.

If you still have problems with the installation, you may have an overheating problem in the system, or a defective motherboard, CPU or memory.