I'm trying to remove a DDO from a friend's hard drive (he sent it over to me with lots of films on - it's currently my slave drive). Friend doesn't recall which DDO he actually used on the disk, the disk has no operating system installed. The disk is IBM 80g compressed to 30g. Anyone know how I tackle this problem? Have tried a few searches but nothing seems to make much sense. Cheers.

Don't know your PC's SPECS but guess you have a Floppy Disk Drive. 1.Boot with a win98 SE Boot Disk (that must have capability to handle HDD >32GB may have to update old ones with MS download that fixes the limitation) 2. Once in A:\> prompt type FDISK /MBR 3. You may now try repartitioning using FDISK to see if you see the full 80GB or use that Drive and use WinXP CD for partioning and reformat. M

WHOA!!! If he uses FDISK he will WIPE his hard drive. He MUST make the "Slave" the "Primary". Disconnecting his own drive ALTOGETHER.

Unfortunately I don't have a win98se disk to hand. Also I didn't really understand a thing you said. Would it be ok for you to come over and fix the problem for me? I'm in the south of France. Cheers! Seriously though - I'll try and sort the problem using your method. Thanks.

Is it paramount that the files on that drive be saved? You make no mention of that fact. If not then simply make the drive a primary and use you Xpcd to reformat. Lessons learnt the hard way are not easily forgotten.

Hi, there are no files on the drive - I've copied what I needed and there is no O/S on it. Funnily enough I've just asked my friend (the owner of the drive) if installing XP might work but he reckons: " No. DDO is in the boot sector. If you install XP it’ll install it on a 30gig partion & you loose 50 gig. Wipe the DDO." Please tell me he's wrong so I can gloat!!

Damn, he was correct. The windows CD recognised 30g - I tried to delete things but it didn't work. Still, it did tell me which DDO is installed so now I can search dor a removal process. Cheers for the help.