Well the 1.5TB drive is here.

However Linux is darn reluctant to install on it in any flavour.

Popped it in the box yesterday, Sabayon disc initialised it but couldn't create an NTFS partition, and since it uses logical volumes it actually prevents any other OS from being installed alongside.

So spat that disc out, in with PCLinuxOS. Created an NTFS partition, a 100Gb partition formated in ext4 and a 1TB unformatted main partition.

Back in with Sabayon. Point it at the empty space and pressed 'go'.

It hung after partially formatting.

Back in with PCLOS, wiped the debris from Sabayon, started an install.

Hung after partially formatting.

Linux Mint, ditto.

2nd round of Sabayon and PCLOS now failing to recognise presence of hard drive at all!

SUSE 11.1, Ubuntu 10.04, 9.10 and Kubuntu 10.04 all balked.

XP. Ah, XP.

Popped disc in, quick format, no worries.

Sabayon & PCLOS rinsed and repeated earlier performance.

XP disc in, slow format O/N. Install this morning - dang, that disc is fast. No more than about 6 or 7 min from the time enter was pressed after entering the license code. XP *appears* completely fine.

And that's as far as things have got. If I get time later this evening I'll try another re-partitioning and rebuild, but this is just damn silly so far. It's a virgin disc for heavens sakes, and apparently fine, since XP + SP2 installed without any trouble at all. Maybe I'll do a WUBI, if Kubuntu will do that, and see if it really can work.

One further thing puzzles me - why can't any Ubuntu builds access their repositories, even over a cable connection? That's weird.