" Thanks for responding. But your advice doesn't apply here as I cannot get
the Disk1 to do anything. When I get the fdisk to take me to create primary
DOS partition is is defaulting to Disk2. I choose option 5 to get it to work
on Disk1, but after many moments of activity but zero action % view. I get
the msg, no space to create partition, I exit and try to delete, can't
partition, can't delete, partition cant be defined.
snip

Most hard drive manufacturers have diagnostic and installation software
available for download.

Maxtor and Seagate http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/inde...n&pid=999&swid

Ben