mp3s skipping

[Dulled by Excess]

Hmm...

I have my doubts as to how much you'd be able to compress mp3's. You're right, though, in that you shouldn't have a problem playing mp3's from that drive at all. If you have a CD-RW drive and a spindle o' CD's, you could always just back them up to CD and try reformatting. If you don't have a CD-RW drive, well, fortunately they're relatively affordable. For what it's worth, I too have a Quantum Fireball 20GB drive (or, in my case, had) that held all of my emulators and ROMs. It has since died, and has been reduced to nothing more than a shiny paperweight. Ever since that fiasco, I have come to the conclusion that Quantum drives are a useless waste of cash (and while I'm at it, be wary of purchasing Maxtor drives, you may end up with a Quantum drive instead). If you haven't backed up your mp3 collection, I'd do so ASAP.