Thanks for the reply. First to your questions:
1. I think that I first read about it in the c't, a German computer magazine.
2. Following a link from www.knopper.net
3. I cannot remenber exactly. 4.0.2 of course, but then I tried a version that came out one or two years ago.
4. It is a DELL OptiPlex GX1p (Pentium III)
5. MS Windows XP
6. I am using computers since about 20 years.
7. Linux is my main OS since about 11 years.
8. Use it as an alternative to the OS installed on my computer at work without having to change the computer.
9. Only for looking up information (wikipedia).

The drive is a Seagate ST320413A. I have used MS scandisk and the Seagate tools to check the disk and the file system. According to these two tools everything is fine. Could it be that Windows XP has messed with he disk? There is no NTFS partition on it, though.

Regards,
Matthias