[Pale Rider]

This is weird. I've been a PB/Duo/Laptop owner for years, but I have never had this experience. Last night, in preparation for installing Panther on my TiBook/500, I set it up in target mode and transferred several gigabytes of data over to my home server. I also Carbon Copy Cloned it onto a portable drive. So, I don't have any data disaster on my hands. But I do have a functionality issue. When I rebooted my PB, it wouldn't boot. Sometimes it would just sit there with the spinning wheel spinning, sometimes it would get to the login screen, sometimes it would get to login, display my desktop and just freeze. I booted in single user mode [took me three times before it would get to command prompt], and fsck told me everything was okay. Zapped PRAM [yeah, yeah, I know, but call me superstitious] Upon reboot, total lockup. So, I popped a 10.2 install disk in, and ran disk utility; the machine froze. When I tried again, I thought about attempting a system re-install; made it that far, only to discover that the installer saw no disks to install on. At this point, I thought "aha, hard drive failure," so I logged into my server and ordered a new HD from MacSales. Just for fun, I tried re-booting in target mode, and guess what....it works fine. Both partitions appear on the desktop of the master computer, and I can work with them with no problem. Verify/repair disk permissions and repair disk goes fine with no issues reported. Absolutely no problem. I am completely confused about this one.

[amazing]

Try doing an install while in target disk mode. Also, try running DiskWarrior in TDM.

Sounds like it didn't unmount correctly and got zapped. You might be able to resurrect it.