Your suggestion of having a windows box available on my bench to plug in boards/drives, etc. is a good one. Maybe I could build one. Haha. I crack myself up.my 2 cents. Install the p3605 in a windoze box (if you have one and are comfortable with windows) and see if you can repartition/format it there first. Ie. give it a bit of a test drive, copy some files etc. etc. If it works there you've ruled out the P3605 has issues. If you are more comfortable with Linux give that a go instead.
I'll keep an eye on Craigslist for something decent.