Almost. You first partition. Then format. M2

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Oh dear, in that case I'm back to square one. I can't partition because FDISK won't let me, telling me that the disk is 100% full and there is no space to create a dos partition. I tried all the other options including removing the partition which looked like it was going to wipe the disk but when I said ok it said that it couldn't because the disk could not be locked.

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If you got the msg could not be locked, are you bootung on a floppy? M2

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No, I'm running it from the DOS prompt.

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If I run FDISK from a floppy then I'm only given 4 options. Option 5, to change the drive, is not an option.

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sam cufevi, In a MS-DOS prompt window, as you've done before; fdisk {press enter} Say Yes [Y] {press enter}, to enable large disk support. 5 {press enter} Type/enter the fixed drive number, and press enter. You should be back to the screen you had before, but for the proper drive. Now, you need to Delete the Logical Dos Drives, then the Extended DOS Partition, then the Primary DOS Partition. Any problems so far, if so, at what point? Now, go back and set the Primary Dos partition, then the Ext. Dos partition, and as many logical dos drives, as you want. Any problems so far, if so, at what point? Now exit fdisk, and restart the computer. Either format the new drives in explorer {in windows}, or in a DOS prompt window. Any problems doing this? Your {exter} drive came with a CD, yes? MaxBlast3 installation software maybe. If it did, you could boot the computer with this CD, and setup your drive. Just a thought. "I'm using nigh on 30 gigs of the drive." Didn't understand that sentence. Could you explain, please. Thanks Don't quite follow a couple of other things, but that stands out ;-) Got in on this, not at the start, so might have to do some catching up :-) Your desktop PC, is it running Win98? Yes/No I'll Try

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Nigh on: "Almost" 30 gigs on the drive. I'm running windows ME I followed the instructions and got as far as: "5 {press enter} Type/enter the fixed drive number, and press enter. You should be back to the screen you had before, but for the proper drive." When I selected the delete options It tells me that there are no partitions to delete. If I then jump ahead to create the logical drive iyt tells me I cannot create a logical dos drive without an extended dos partition and I can't create an extended dos partition because there's n"no space to create a dos partition"

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Hey Ill try: I deliberately avoided putting the drivers on from the hard disk. My brother bought the same system at the same time and had nothing but problems with it, he eventually loaded it without the drivers and had no problems except of course he can't partition his drive either...maybe it's a genetic thing lol.

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Ok guys, moderate success. I downloaded Maxblast and it worked like a dream, couldn't have been easier. I split the drive into four partitions. I rebooted. The partitions hadn't been assigned drive letters so I now had F:(Vol1) at a quarter of it's original size and no obvious way to access the other three drives. So here I followed your directions Ill try and using FDisk I deleted all the partitions and then re-partitioned through dos. That all seemed to go well until at the end when I hit esc to get back to windows the computer crashed. I re-booted and was back to F: (Vol1) so I shut it down and went to bed. This morning I booted up and there were drives F, G, H and I...success. Except they won't let me format them. Starting a format through right-clicking or through dos kicks me off the machine. Still, I'll keep trying and thanks again for all your help guys. Veni, Vidi, Vici.

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