Help - corrupted files on my minix partitions

[Xav <MBGE4MDC@fs1.ee.man.ac.uk>]

Yup, it's the newbie again: On Friday I found that some of my files 
and directories on my minix partitions had become corrupted (doing an 
"ls -l" gave a question mark in the first column). It got worse over 
the weekend, resulting in me having to re-minit one of the partitions 
(even fsck virtually gave up, after getting stuck in a neverending 
loop).

Things _seemed_ to be better, as I reinstalled various files, but 
yesterday it decided to zap my passwd file - TWICE!

My question is, am I doing anything wrong? Yes, I know it's a bit of 
an open question, but particularly do I need to do anything before I 
switch off the computer. I already logout of all pty's and exit 
TOSWIN, but is there a "sync" or something similar that I should be 
using - if so, where can I find it?

Cheers,

Xav <mbge4mdc@fs1.ee.man.ac.uk>