but a couple of my partitions managed to eat themselves over the weekend

Oh, not good. I didn't realize it was so urgent. In that case, let us know how it performs once you have it up and running. I have a A7V8X that I'm just itching to buy some drives for. I'll probably end up waiting for the Maxtors to be more readily available before I even think of picking one up. Of course, unless I run into drive failures, as you have. If I can manage it, I might even wait until the beginning of next year before picking up a drive. Knowing me, though, I won't.