Emax

Someone gave me this awesome Emax HD sampler with 3 books full of 
diskettes. but the hard drive wouldn't work It reads "Hard disk 
error" or "Different Software Rev" messages to me. I discovered last 
night that when I boot the sampler from a floppy, it loads as OS 
version 3.2. if i monkey with one particular disk though, it'll load 
as OS version 1.1HD and I can see the hard drive contents, run 
diagnostics and can play around with all the other buttons. So i've 
been on emulatorarchive trying to figure out what to do. I ran a hard 
drive test and it says it's all right. I ran all the other tests and 
they say it's all right. So I'm trying to decide if I should reformat 
the hard drive. (There's tons of sounds on it that I can't 
save.)...and if I do reformat the hard drive, with OS version 1.1HD, 
will all the disks with OS version 3.2 work. At this point I can 
access most of the diskette sounds and use the system for play back 
only. I do want to use the other functions of the sampler (to make 
those beautiful gritty 12bit samples) but don't want to accidentally 
disable the thing completely. 
....any suggestions?