HELP!!! Serious cascade of tech issues with older blue and r

This has been an ongoing saga... first, the mpc started losing .seqs ('wrong file' message), then jumbling up my .pgms (claiming it couldn't find samples that were there). I figured this was a hd issue so I backed up, wiped and reformatted and still have the same issues.
I decided I should install the jjos so I bought a cf card online and when I tried to format it the machine gave me the message 'format is invalid'. So it looks like I can't even put the jjos on it (when I go to install jjos with the cf card in the machine, the cf card does not mount on my computer and the machine won't let me format it, viz. 'format is invalid' message above).
I bought this machine used from a friend who got it around 2006 or 07. It's a blue and red version with an maxed out hd (80 gigs, way too much I know). Seriously, what good is that much space anyway when you can only load a handful of mbs at a time?
I keep trying to remedy the problems by wiping and reloading, revising organization methods, etc, but my sinking feeling is that it's just an old busted machine that can't be saved short of a miracle. I can use it as a somewhat reliable sample bank but I can't depend on it to keep any of my data secure.
Anyone have thoughts on any of the above issues?
Similar problems with older blue and red machines or machines with maxed out hds?
I can recreate pgms and seqs from scratch but it's pretty disheartening especially since I know there's a chance the machine will just eat them up again anyway.

Reformatting a hard drive isn't going to cure a hard drive with hardware issues, the drive may be failing and there's nothing you can do about that.

I'm not saying it's faulty, but the first thing I would do is open up the MPC and take the hard drive out and see if you can use the CF card without any problems. Then try to install JJOS free. If all successful you could try putting the drive back in and reformatting it in the MPC under JJOS free.

Also if you have a USB hard drive caddy, run the drive in a disk utility app to see if there's any issues.

Also if it has a memory upgrade, take that chip out as well (maybe take that out first as it's easy to do, you can rule out memory issues straight way, although TBH it doesn't sound anything like memory problems...)