> I'm not sure if it'd be something worse, but I'd guess that it is;  Your

Well...
Over the last few moments, I've discovered how much I love computers. 

Indeed, a reboot found the drive to be unavailable to the system.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I backed up what I could, but I couldn't
actually get everything, because those 3 partitions that I could write to
earlier just vanished. Not encouraging.  I suppose anything that's gone is
by definition not important.

Of course it's the 36G (newest & biggest in the system) drive. I've
brought the system back up without that drive.  Now that mail is working
again, I'm going to bed.

Tomorrow, I'll investigate this per your recommendations, and on IBM's
site, and see what I see...

> Sorry to be the interpreter of potentially bad news.

Thanks for the help -- it's far better than no information at all. 

Andy

> --
> Michael Vieths
> Foeclan at Winternet.Com