Question : Problem: Restoring to a previous date does not complete, leaving the Partition Raw and unreadable

This problem first occurred a year ago with this system. At about 25 percent of a restore, the screen went blank and everything halted. I decided to replace the motherboard, which fixed the problem. Now, a year later, the unit is doing the same thing again, only differently. Now, it will go to about 32 percent, and the DVD drive/hard drive will just stop responding, and everything stays at a standstill. After placing a backup drive into the system, Windows Disk Management tells me the Partition in question was not formatted by windows, that is is some other operating system. Also Partition Magic 8 tells me that the partition is BAD, and unusable. If I go to Disk Management, I can re-format the Partition NTFS and it states it is healthy. Then Partition Magic will recognize it as being OK. I took the Restore Disks and restored another drive on another Computer - and it totally restored that hard drive. I then took that hard drive and tried to restore the formatted partition in the problem Computer, using a USB port IDE Interface as the source. Again using Norton Ghost 2003, I started the restore. Everything went along fine until it hit that 32 percent mark, and everything again died. Same Windows Management analysis of the un-restored partition as previous.
This particular disk has 3 partitions on it, the second one has WIN98SE, and it booted and ran just fine. I use OSL2000 as a boot manager to run the different OS's on this Computer.
So, my question is: Is this a software or hardware problem? And, if it is hardware, what is the culprit? I have a hard time believing it is software related, because this Computer runs just fine otherwise with a good OS on the Partition in question -  I am normally running - Win XP Professional.  BIOS is just fine - latest version for that model. Totally bewildering to me.

Answer : Problem: Restoring to a previous date does not complete, leaving the Partition Raw and unreadable

Ok, it has been fixed. Whether it has truly been solved is a horse of another color.
As it turned out, it was a software conflict between the restore process and the software it was trying to restore itself. One part of the software had what is called a "portal" in it, this particular one is one that is used by Big Fish Games. They had been having problems in it in that a lot of their subscribers were unable to download new games thru it - it simply came up with a statement that said 'Download Interupted". This had been happening on this Computer also, and when my wife raised hell with them about it, they had some software guru get on the computer and he uploaded a couple files in to the "Portal" to correct errors in it. After he did that, the downloads were able to work fine. I by chance did another backup of that Computer after that had been accomplished, and guess what - the restore from that backup worked just fine.
I would have sworn it was a hardware problem, because of the way it acted and the things it did. Why I was able to restore to my laptop is still a mystery to me, because I cannot check out that OS, I restored a USB Drive with it, and all appears to be intact. I fully intend to place that partition onto a 3 1/2" drive as soon as I get the USB cable that will permit that, and see if the OS runs in the system it was originally loaded on and configured for.
So, I will update this once more, after that feat has been accomplished. It is either going to throw more mystery in to this situation or confirm that the error is non-transferrable via restore methods.
I have been told that some of these "Portals" that these game manufacturers use are a real software headaches, which certainly proved to be true in this case. I now have an extra computer identical to the one that was in question - will probably store it for parts or future use somewhere.
I sure spent a lot of money on a lousy $8.00 game that apparently caused the problem.
Anyone got any comments regarding this??????