Well, edited my fstab to only mount /dev/hda1 as read-only and it seems to be working.If I try to mount it rw the write errors eventually cause crashes with either ext2 or fat32...
I found some references to 2.4.18 screwing up HD's in desktops way back when it was new, so I think this may be related. So for now I am using it to turn my Z into a better i-pod (which is what I bought the drive for anyways...)