so, it appears that hard drive is going :( Weird as I ran Windows all day recovering (different partition on disk) w/o an error. Install Linux and WHAM. Looking at seagate for the 5 yr warranty vs the 1 to 3 on maxtor. My old scsi disks ran 8 years w/o issue. this disk can't be more than 3 years old :( I remember when..... -- greg pryzby