MacIvory 3 overwrites its own HD partition - HELP!

[evans@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Robert Evans)]

Greetings,

An interesting, and painful problem has developed on the following
system:

	MacIvory 3, 4MW memory, FPA, Genera 8.1.1
	MacIntosh IIFX, 40 MB HD, System 7.0.1
	MacInstor HD, 1GB

During the last 2 weeks, the above system has trashed the MacInstor HD
which contains the Ivory FEP0 partition, requiring us to reformat and
rebuild the HD.  Symptoms of imminent failure are LISP functions
(pre-defined and user-defined) not working properly, (strange error
messages, arguments no longer correct).  If the system is shutdown and
rebooted, the MacInstor Icon is gone from initial screen, and attempts
to remount it indicate that the disk has a "strange partition table".

Virus protection is loaded on the Mac, provided in the Macivory
package.  I believe it is SAM.

Has anybody heard or encountered a similar problem?  I am
unfortunately getting to good at re-installing Genera 8.1.1 :-)
     - R. B. Evans -
(evans@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu)