A good cloning program will notice there is stuff on the "target"
drive (or partition) and warn you and make you specifically say
it is "OK" to overwrite it.
A better one will tell you it looks like a system drive and REALLY
warn you and make you jump through more hoops...

If the target drive has NO data on it and ALL partitions can be erased
(if more than one), I usually use something "brutal" like IBM ZAP.
That erases the beginning of the drive and makes the entire drive "look"
blank and unused by ANY OS or file system...
PS: It is not a "secure erase", but that is N/A here...

Using something you might already have:
Use the Maxtor or WD utilities for formatting the target drive.
Caution: Erase a drive with only THAT drive connected.
That is also the safest way. (Can't erase the wrong one.)
The software will only work on their own drives, if it is "alone" in the system.

                                            Rick Glazier

----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
> I seem to have messed up my HD by using Ghost.  When I try to use Ghost
> or XXcopy it says my HD isn't big enough.  This HD is 20GB, but I'm being
> told it's much smaller and too small to even put a DOS partition on.
>
> I've tried to reformat it, but in Windows I'm being told it's in use and
> I can't seem to get to that drive in DOS.  When I look at it in Windows
> it says it's 20GB.
>
> Do I need to delete everything on that drive first?  But that doesn't
> make sense.
>
> I need to get this drive to again read 20GB so I can clone to it.  I'm
> cloning from an 80GB HD that is only 12GB used.

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