"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
You are confusing the overlay with the managed partition. The overlay
resides on the boot drive. The managed partition (in this case) was on
the
second drive.

What you should have done for your test was this.
-Create a boot disk with a DOS partition and an OS installed.
-Install the overlay. Do not convert the existing DOS partition on the
boot
disk to a managed partition.
-Create a managed partition on the second drive.
-Use FDISK to confirm the partition details.
-Remove the overlay. This might be possible with a boot to floppy (using
the magic technique) and SYS C: or it might require FDISK/MBR or it might
require using FDISK to remove the partition and reinstall it together with
the OS. It's version and product dependant. Whatever, DON'T TOUCH THE
SECOND DISK
-Reboot. The overlay is now inactive and the partition on the second
drive
is inaccessible. There might be a small DOS partition in the unusable
space
at the end of the managed partition, but it won't be formatted. Use FDISK
to see the partition details.
-Re-install the overlay. The partition on the second disk will now be
accessible and undamaged.

The overlay is relatively easy to remove and can be done accidentally.
Converting the managed partition back to a DOS partition without damaging
the data is the difficult bit.

Note that you could REALLY do the OP a favour if you developed a way of
making the overlay active without installing it on the boot drive - eg
boot
from specially configured floppy.



I am back at work now, so don't have time to run any more tests at the
moment...
but I have no reason to dis-believe anything you've said.

My point was simply that the overlay is *not* easy to remove.

I could *not* remove it by running fdisk and deleting the entire drive
nor could I removed it by booting from floppy and doing a sys C:

The only way of getting the overlay removed was by running the utility
that installed it and disabling it...then exit and save.
Then re-run the utility and uninstall the overlay.

As I mentioned, the only other way I've been able to remove an overlay is
by the so called "blast the HD method" with a the mfg's lo-level format or
some other similar utility.

Again...give it a try with an old , spare HD and you will see that the
overlay is
very hard to get rid of...
The OP surely would have had to do so purposely.