I have a large drive, set up with a mixture of NT and FAT partitions. I have just discovered that most of the paritions overlap each other slightly. So far I have had no problems with this situation that must have existed since I set up the drive. Is there one single FAT for the whole drive that will prevent two different partitions writing to the same sector? How would go about setting this right? I have already tried shrinking a partition and moving it slightly with Partition Resizer. After an hour or more of testing, it threw up a bad sector error (althought Spinrite did not detect any bad sectors: I am inclined to trust Spinrite.) Terry@nz

The conditions you describe can cause data corruption or loss. Did you create the prtitions using a non- windows OS?

What I would do is backup any critical data you have and repartition your disk and reinstall everything. Overlapping partitions will sooner or later start giving you problems. You cannot have a single FAT for a whole drive if that drive has multiple partitions. Its one FAT for each partition. What you do have is the Master Boot Record which records the information on individual partitions. You can alter the numbers in here to remove the overlapping and this is what Partition Resizer is attempting to do. Flaky partitioning software can cause the problem to arise. Partition Resizer might be the culprit. Resizing a partition is no trivial task, there are lots of things that can go wrong. If you are getting bad sectors, all the more reason the backup and start again. Make sure you use the partitioning software on the Windows CD. That is reliable and does the job properly. Stuart

(I have just discovered that most of the paritions overlap each other slightly) How ?? You could try TESTDISK to correct partition overlaping problem, have not used it for that problem but it should work. http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.htm... I do agree with StuartS .

TopFarmer: I was giving my new Spinrite software a test run, and that was the first thing it told me, along with a warning. I checked it out with Partition Resizer next: same story. Since I was here last I used Ranish, and got the big red message that it was the MBR that was overlapped!! I may have used Fdisk to do the partitioning, or I may have done it with Paragon. Don't remember. I like Paragon because it has a graphic interface, and you can *see* what you are doing. On the other hand Fdisk has stood the test of time. I can see myself getting deeper into the doodoo if I try to fix it. Better take StuartS's advice, backup & start again. Thanks you guys. Terry@nz