My Mac has been crashing a lot lately. A bunch of different applications, no one in particular. 7.5.3 is not particularly well regarded and could be your problem. And of course run Disk First Aid. Maybe bad cables, especially your Zip drive.
Zip drives have cheap cables.
It will include the new HFS-Plus file structure, but to take advantage of it of course you'll have to initialize the hard drive. Macworld Expo next August will be in New York City instead of Boston. No, I don't think you can. The zones disappear. This is exactly what is screwing up my server.