[Kungfucious]

just what i was going to say... im sure even with OEM stuff, you can just pop on over to the manufacturer websites and pick up latest drivers and even extra utilities to diagnose and repair your hardware.. As for partitioning to NTFS, i really dont think it would be the cause of your problems, more likely that windows was using generic drivers to run your hard drive and therefore having problems with it.

Its always best to update your drivers to the latest before you decide to pull the plug on any hardware, you never know, it may just work.