Well, here I am worried about the Ximian install hosing my sys and it went relatively smooth. Then I think I'll put my new HD on the hpt370 interface, format, give a few gig's to Windblows for more games and the rest to Linux. 1st mistake - using the "Max-Blast" disk to partition. Ya, it Max Blasted me! I wanted to install the dreaded "EZ-Bios" arrgghhh! Off set the partition be 66 sectors and screwed the whole thing up. I went into the "advanced" option (ya sure, what ever you say maxtor), and removed the damn thing. Well, got the partitions back to the proper sectors but lost all the Linux drive labels (no / or /home, or /usr - just ext2 partit's) and of course "kernel-panic/can't mount root partition". Also, the Windblows D drive/partit was changec to the 1st partition of the Maxtor on the hpt370, and of course Windblows got real stupid about it and wouldn't boot. So, wipe all but the C drive, re-part, format, spend half the day with Norton DiskDoc and utilities getting M$ crap to behave, and the other half re-installing Linux. I would really like it if there was a Linux program apart from the CDRom install that would let you re-label the parts. I know that If I could have just labelled the ext2 parts to the right labels that Linux would have boot. But I was clueless as to how to do this from the rescue - since it sets up a ramdisk and, try as I might could get anything to go beyond read only format. If anyone knows how to A) partition new hd's from linux in both fat32 and ext2 (but overriddingly in ext2) and B) How to solve boot problems when the root part is no found but exists Please tell me. Well, anyway, the partitions are set up and the HPT370 is running in Linux (don't even want to deal with a raid setup now) and I have all this space in Windblows to load the plethera of games and have, by no design of my own, cleared out 90% of the crap on the M$ drives. OH WELL, live and learn - don't use EZ-Bios - the damn thing thinks were still in the mid 80's and bound to 2 gig partitions with dumb mobo bioses, I wish Maxtor would get a clue. Cheers, Curtis