Interesting how the 250GB WD disk I just replaced the 120GB (same model series) OEM disk with is pumping first time on the bigdisk images. Perhaps it was just a faulty disk that had been sitting on the store shelf too long...weird because it was working fine with a USB<->IDE adapter. Next time I'll run bonie++ before blaming the empeg. Of course, I don't know for sure this is going to work, but I'm already a lot more confident about it