Hmmm - the partitioning changes to 9a don't affect the position of hda4 - the basic partition format that empegs were originally shipped with is:

hda1 - 32mb (with a swapfile as a file in the partition)
hda2 - 32mb
hda3 - 16mb
hda4 - rest of disk

This got updated in beta8c to:

hda1 - container (32mb)
hda5 - root (24mb)
hda6 - swap (8mb)
hda2 - 32mb
hda3 - 16mb
hda4 - rest of disk

I *think* 9a made hda5 16Mb and hda6 16Mb. However, these both still add to 32Mb and so none of the other partitions moved. Also, the only partition "pumped" with new data is hda5, which is 64mb away from your music on the disk - a safe margin :)

This has been quite extensively tested and we're not aware of any problems on disks that havn't been fdisk'ed by the user. What did you do when fdisking?

A (long winded, but possible) way to try and find hda4 is to use fdisk to alter the start cylinder of the partition, one at a time (try going up maybe 8 and down 8 or so, one by one) then rebooting and seeing if the music gets mounted. The partition table is stored at the start of the disk. Obviously, don't write to hda4 and ideally don't run the player, which writes to hda3 (it only writes to the start of hda3, so there should be no overlap, but to be on the safe side....). When you find it, back up your data (to the second drive?), reinstall beta9a, then copy it back.

Hugo