>> It's pretty clear that the damage is done by chkdsk due to a bug in XP.
>
> I tend to think so, but surely the one test you haven't yet tried is
seeing if you can reproduce this effect without tampering with the
partitions at all? (Do you have another similar system where the HD
still has its original partition table, or did you keep a backup of the
original somewhere?)
Now that I think about it, I don't believe the original small disk ever
got reused for anything so it's probably around here in a box somewhere,
I'll see what I can do.
>> 10. Post your results
>
>With what? :-) Seriously, that has to be one of the least
invitingly-expressed offers I've ever seen on this list!
Well, I've rebuilt one test system twice and the other one four times in
an attempt to get to the bottom of this for the common good, and I
thought someone else might want to enjoy the fun with me :-)
Seriously, I wanted to document what was going on in case it might spark
an idea from someone else (which it did, thanks!)
If, as seems likely, using Gparted, or Ghost, or TruImage or some
combination of similar partition tweaking results in odd ntfs metadata
that can tickle a bug that causes the standard XP disk scan and repair
tools to eat your disk after installing 1.7, well that seems worth
knowing about. Now I'd like to get some more specific information about
what goes wrong. Might help improve things like the ntfs tools.
Thanks again for the feedback,
Steve
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