I added a second Maxtor hard drive (30 GB) as a slave intending to use it only for data. I was happy to get it in and working but am now wondering if I goofed by setting up the (one) partition on this drive as "primary" rather than "extended." I cannot delete the partition and start over w/o error msg. indicating the volume is in use and threatening errors. I have one main hard drive set up as primary C with logical D. I'd like to know if anyone has recommnendations for the partition and whether I can safely delete it and start over despite the error msg. I am also planning to reformat the main HD in case that makes a difference in my options. Thanks for any help -- probably should have read up a little more before zipping through the XP partition/format process.

I don't know why you're getting errors on the second hard drive. Perhaps you've configured XP to use the slave drive for "My Documents" or something. It shouldn't matter if it's a Primary or Extended partition. With a partition tool that runs from a bootable floppy, you can delete the partion and create a new one, or reformat the existing partition. That can be done using FDISK from a Windows boot floppy, a hard drive tool available from the manufacturer, or using Ranish Partition Manager (freeware that can be installed on a floppy. Best Luck, Bob

If you have a primary partition on the second drive, it will normally install itself as Drive D, bumping the logical partition on the first drive up from D to E. Be careful that the Partition that is being deleted is actually the one that you really want to.

Well known issue with having the primary drive having two partitions and then adding a slave with a primary. The registry has pointers to d: which is now the slave drive. This is why you get the drive locked message. If you are going to wipe the slave drive don't do it from XP [since usually it won't let you] but from a boot diskette. You can avoid this issue be either making the slave partition an extended one or just wipe it so there are no partitions and use XP for partition and format it.

Thank you for the replies -- my confusion has arisen in part because the drive actually came in as "H" after all the other drives. The Vaio comes with a HD partitioned into C and D and that hasn't changed. In disk management the original HD shows as "Disk 0" with the slave as "Disk 1." My plan is to try and use a boot disk and FDSK to delete the partition. http://fdisk.radified.com/ I'm hoping I can then re-partition/format with XP. Although, I have one more question for wanderer, when you say "wipe" are you referring to the use of the wipe utility to zero out portions of the drive? I'll post back --

If the drive is designated H then it was/is using some some of drive compression utility like drvspace. The D drive seen is a virtual drive volume on H. It may be deleted if you are positive that you don't want to recover any data from the drive.

I'm a little confused by the last reply -- in disk management the C shows as "primary" on disk 0, the D shows as a logical drive on that disk (this comprises the main and first HD) and the H is equivalent to disk 1 which I added with one primary partition (now realizing that was not a good idea). I didn't think I was using any type of compression -- unless it came in automatically through the XP partitioning process.