replying to myself... I found some more bitflips. shitishit. two in /sbin/init, one in /lib/librt.so.1 (which eventually flopped back) and so on. system still up, but... there are no kernel messages about it. is this a driver problem, hardware problem, settings problem? some way to resolve it? is there a point in using scsi to avoid such flaws? Thank you... and when this becomes OT, just point me to an other list please. Lars === some more information: from dmesg: Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31 ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39 VP_IDE: chipset revision 6 VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686b (rev 40) IDE UDMA100 controller on pci00:07.1 ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd000-0xd007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd008-0xd00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio hda: IBM-DTLA-305040, ATA DISK drive ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 hda: 80418240 sectors (41174 MB) w/380KiB Cache, CHS=5005/255/63 # hdparm /dev/hda /dev/hda: multcount = 16 (on) I/O support = 1 (32-bit) unmaskirq = 1 (on) using_dma = 0 (off) keepsettings = 0 (off) nowerr = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 8 (on) geometry = 5005/255/63, sectors = 80418240, start = 0 # hdparm -i /dev/hda /dev/hda: Model=IBM-DTLA-305040, FwRev=TW4OA68A, SerialNo=YJEYJ1Z6276 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs } RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=40 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=380kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=80418240 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 Drive Supports : Reserved : ATA-2 ATA-3 ATA-4 ATA-5 Kernel Drive Geometry LogicalCHS=5005/255/63 PhysicalCHS=79780/16/63