I will be very brief but desperately need some advice on things to try: Problem: File index I$30 becomes corrupted almost immediately when OS is installed. Ongoing problem for 3 months and almost 20 reinstalls of the OS. Have also installed xp pro numerous times, makes no difference. Temporary: Have been running chkdsk /r every time the computer starts up. If I dont it gets corrupted and the next time I start it up the OS will lock or loop unable to load due to lost system files. Assistance needed: I have two HD's and being that they cost $200.00 a piece and are reputable I doubt it is them but I am RMA'ing one anyway to see. I need to stop the HD's from corrupting data on the disk so I can live normally! Computer: AMD Barton 2500 ASUS A7V600 Motherboard Onboard VIA KT600 SATA controller <- I'm suspicous of this 1 GIG GEIL DDR (2x 512)(listed as a compliant speed/manufacturer from ASUS) 2x WD Raptor 10k RPM 36GB SATA HD Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 400watt ps (think alliance I'm at work so I do not know off the top of my head) Note: I have tried Raid 0 and non raid, I dont want to use Raid 1 with the minimal size of the HD's and personal use. What if anything could be causing corruption of my HD (which is always in index I$30) besides the HD itself? Anything?? Please help for idea's I'm desperate... the hours of patches after each reinstall are the worst!

I have absolutely no experience with SATA HD's...but was there a diagnostic floppy (Data Lifeguard) that came with them as with IDE drives? If so, did your run the program to see if errors were found?

If the corruption always occurs with one specific file, I would not suspect a hardware problem. Do you run virus/trojan/spyware checkers?

HI mybe a possiblitiy how ever slim it might be. I know Win98 can have a problem shuting down to fast, where not enough time is given to complety write data to the hdd. You may be haveing the same problem?

Thank you for your input so far, to respond to suggestions so far: jam: Yes I ran every diagnostic utility included with the drive and they conclude the drive is in perfect working order. I also downloaded a diagnostic from westerndigital.com and the diagnostic program was not able to run any tests on my drive, it could not detect it. dan: These are brand new drives and I have switched in and out of Raid 0 many times, I have run Pandascan numerous times to never find any viruses. Is there something else I can do to scan? TopFarmer: I am running win 2k pro. I am not sure if this problem continues from win98 but I will look later tonight in MS library for issues. Thanks for the ideas so far!