These are confused, especially after virus attack... there are viruses [OneHalf for example] that are MBR stuff, they encode your harddisk without your noticing this, and after coding halfdisk they write on the secren "One alf'... the disk appears to work fine, but if you format without curing the virus first, your data is lost! because the decoding part of the wirus is dead.... I never heard of mbr format destroying hdd [but ut doesn't means this can't happen!] a good way to cure this particular virus would be to use Dr. Web to decode the hd and avoid formatting. /| /| / ------- / | / | . \ \/ /| / | / |/ \ \/\ / | / |/ /---\ /\ \/ | / / \/ \ | / [log in to unmask] /\ PCBUILD's List Owner's: Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]> Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>