Orf - You should be able to manipulate the disk\partitions in XP's disk management console.  (I assume this is in place on XP Home)

Right click My Computer and select Manage. Find Disk Management in the left pane and open it.

See if that'll do what you want.  Incidentally, this is also the area is where you can format new drives.

Otherwise, you might have to do the operation in DOS.  Nothing to stop you booting into DOS on an XP machine with a W98 startup disk.  

Only thing is, your 'plug-in' hard drive will need to be seen by the system in DOS - not sure how you'll arrange that.

But, if it's seen OK, you can run FDisk from a floppy and do what you need to there.  Then reboot and convert the drive to NTFS (if you want to - not obligatory) via Disk Management and set it up as you want.

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
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The NOSPIN Group
http://freepctech.com

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Orf Bartrop 
  Subject: [PCBUILD] Recovering a Hard Drive


  I use Win XP Home and have a mobile rack with a HD in it. This HD is
  partitioned into three logical drives "D", "E" and "F." The "D" part is
  no longer recognised by my system and I cannot access it. The other two
  are OK. The whole HD does not contain data that I want to keep.

  What I want to do is to delete all logical drives and create just one
  drive, namely "D." What is the best way to do that? I do not have
  Partition Magic but I believe there is a way using WIN XP itself but I
  am not sure how.

  Anyone any idea?

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