thanks guys... seems to have been partition magic that screwed up the drive.
not sure what happened, but i switched it over to LBA mode, giving me a larger 1024 cylindar boundary.. formatted it.. then switched it back to auto (chs). now everything is workin fine, and the 1024 boundary is showing to be good.
normally i dont touch partiton magic, but it was the only thing i had at the time that could dupe an NTFS partition.
you dont know how frustrating it is trying to trouble shoot computer problems, when you need the computer to design a college network from the ground up, and you need it the next day
oh an no jumper has been changed.. its been set to master since i got it.
thanks again guys