thks mate am running on raid 1 now.

funny thing about the ide drive and ide hd.

still hangs if i load em together (i.e. one ide cable linking the hd, cdrom and ide connector together):

I---------------I-------I
ide port dvdrom ide hd

however if i were to do this:
I---------------I-------I
ide port dvdrom

or

I---------------I-------I
ide port ide hd

everything would be just fine. tried a second ide cable. same results. bx2 bug u reckon ??