I've got a couple of problems, which may or may not be related.

Firstly, I've been having problems with my harddisk this last week. I originally thought that it might be a Windows thing (I installed some downloaded scanner drivers, then Windows refused to boot...at all, even after I manually deleted the problematic files), but it's spread. I have a 41Gb harddisk which I usually partition to hell (regularly about 15 partitions or more). Now, after I had the above problem with drivers, I (re)installed 98se and all seemed well. So I installed Mandy8.2 and gave the last 15Gbish to a vfat partition to be used solely for MP3s. All seems well. Reboot a few times into both Mandy & 98 and it works fine - yipee! But then I boot into 98 one final time...and the MP3 partition has gone! So, I dutifully boot into Mandy to see what the problem is...Kernel panic, no init found. Hmm, what's the problem? Boot from Mandy install CD into rescue mode...the last 30Gbish of my harddisk has been replaced by unformated, untyped, completely blank space! Hda1 (4Gb vfat), hda5 (4Gb vfat) and hda6 (50Mb ext2, /boot) are untouched...but the rest has disappeared. I've tried low-level formatting (or at least, used the 'low-level format utility' software that came on my mobo cd) but to no avail...it all works for about 1-or-2 days and then...poof, it's gone. Do you guys think this could be my harddisk on its way out? If so, the bloody thing is going back to the store...I've had it less than 9 months.

The other problem (if you can call it that): Since I needed to (re)install Windows, I decided that I would at least try XP...nope, the CD doesn't work properly in my machine. The CD itself it absolutely fine...we installed XP onto my housemate's machine with it. The really confusing thing is that we have almost identical machines. We have the same mobo (except that mine is a couple of revisions newer...he can't use the AMDXP chips...I can, ha ha), the same harddrive (except that his works fine), we both have an atapi DVD drive, we both have NVidia GeForce cards (mine's a GF2, his is a GF3), we both have SBLive Value s/cs, we both have the same amount of RAM. The only differences between them is that he has a pci-scsi card for his cd-burner, and I have a pci-ide card for my zip drive (his zip is usb). When I boot from the XP CD, it goes through and 'initiates' all the drivers (why does it load all the drivers? Can't it probe your hardware and only use the ones you need?) and gets the the point where it says 'Setup is starting Windows'...and then promptly doesn't. It hangs completely.

As I said, the second one is not reall a problem...more of a minor annoyance since I don't like to be defeated...especially when I can see no possible reason for the problems.

Any advice with regard to the harddisk would be greatly appreciated, and any sensible advice with regard to XP would be good too.

Thanks for at least spending the time to read my inane rambling.

--Thymox

Actually, the problem seems to have solved itself. I have now done about 3 or 4 'low level' formats, and the drive ticks along nicely now. Perhaps it was just being really finicky about the partition table, which was remarkably screwed...hda3 being the last 10Gb of the disk with hda12 before that, and then hda8...it was royally crazy.

Still having probs with the ol' WXP install CD, however. As I said, it's not really a problem, but I don't like coming up against something that should work fine, but doesn't.

Dare to mention the manufacturer's name

It's the older version of this. I believe it's the same specs, just different name (not Vancouver)

I've seen a lot negative comments a IBM Deskstar at Cnet

Sorry, but that's what I've seen.

It doesn't seem to be a particularly big problem now. All was working fine and then...poof, the last 30Gb of partitions disappeared. It seems to have stopped now, but the last time it happened I was quite annoyed - I normally don't have anything of importance on the final vfat partition, but I had literally just finished copying my MP3 collection (19 CDs worth) over to it. Shut down the computer for the night...in the morning they had gone!

As I said, it seems to be behaving itself now, but I'll bear in mind the negative reviews from your link. Seems odd, though, that my housemate has the same harddisk as me (we bought our stuff at the same time, well, I payed for it and he repaid me - why have 2xcarriage chages?) and his seems absolutely fine.

19 CDs worth , are they ripped of the net (I bet we've all done it) or are they CDs you own or both. I'm just wondering I'm not gonna raid ya house or something .

Just over 8 days solid music. It's actually about 21 CDs, but I have a strict naming routine, so if the tracks are not named, or in order, they don't get onto a proper 'MP3CD', of which there are 19. Two CDs have MP3s that either haven't been named, or haven't been put into track order.

Some are CDs that I own, some are CDs that my brother owns, my sister owns, her fiance owns, my housemates of yore owned, my best friends own & some that I d/led from Acid_kewps former site.

I generally make MP3 'backup's of any CD that comes into our house, whether I like only 1 track or the whole CD. My sister has had her car broken into before now, and had all her tapes stolen, and I've had my car broken into (fairly recently, actually) and had a couple of CDs & my car CD stereo pinched, so I keep backups of absoltely everything incase we need to replace them.