I have two disks on my PC. The first one is used for Windows installation, and the second as a backup drive (for docs, images, etc.). I've reformatted both disks using fdisk, but on my second drive I have some 65 Megabytes that I haven't been able to get rid of. Even using fdisk, formatting both drives, I can't delete or otherwise dispose of this space. It's not a lot in terms of the disk capacity (20 GB) but it bothers me because I didn't have this problem in the past. Does anyone have any idea of what this could mean?

Hi rturro I'm slightly confused here, your saying you want to eliminate free space? If so why? Are you saying you have 65mb left on a 20gig drive? Can you elaborate a little more please Wolfey On a hot summers night would you offer your throat to the Wolf with the Red Roses?

Wolfey, Sorry for not being clear. As I said I have two physical disks. Disk #1 is used as a primary one (Windows, Program Files etc.), Disk #2 as a backup drive (I saved there my documents, pictures etc.). I partitioned Disk #2 so that I had a Linux installation on it. When installing Linux on a separate partition, I chose for Grub as the boot loader. I got into trouble when I decided I didn't want the Linux partition anymore. So I deleted the partition using Partition Magic. For the changes to take effect, I had to reboot but I completely forgot that I had Grub as the boot loader (kinda got used to it). So the system refused to load (because it no longer had a Linux partition with Grub on it). I was quick enough the screw thing even further (sometime I hate myself for this kind of behaviour). Instead of using the Windows Recovery Console (fixmbr), I used a Win98 startup disk with fdisk. I was pretty sure my backup drive would remain intact (after all, it was a separate physical disk). However, something went wrong (still can't figure out what but guess it was because Partition Magic had changed letters for the drives) and I lost everything, meaning both Disks #1 and #2. Okay I had my documents saved on a CD (not all of them but a good part of them), so it was not a tragedy (but a drama for sure ;)). Again, I rebooted from the Win98 diskette and used fdisk to delete all partitions on both disks and re-create them. However, and here we're approaching the core of my question, even when I booted from a diskette and used fdisk, I still have ~65 MB on Disk #2 (the disk itself is a 20 GB disk) which the system sees but which I cannot delete, or repartition, or attach to another partition. Basically, when I installed Windows XP and everything (including Partition Magic), I can see that I have this 65 MB chunk sitting on my second drive, and I can't do anything about it, even when using Partition Magic That is why I wondered what that could mean and if something could be done about it. If you have any ideas I'd appreciate your thoughts. Thanks, rturro

Hi rturro. The XP partitions use the NT type files. The partition is prbhably enough different from W98 that it's fdisk can't 'find' all of your disk. This is just my thought; I am just now getting ready to switch to XP. If you had an XP bootdisk, with fdisk on it or using PartionMagic, you should be able to get it all back. I hope this helps. :)