Many thanks, Robin. I take it then that this suggestion from 'a
friend' is incorrect
"All NTFS formatted drives still require to have a FAT 16/32 partition
(or 2) to facilitate boot-up. Bios's can't read NTFS because it is
requires the OS (Windows or otherwise) to be loaded first. " ??


Well this is coming from a FAT-free Windows XP machine. (I'd never
focused before on how healthy it is.) And I am in the process of trying
to rescue data from a friend's disk which ran Vista and was also
FAT-free.

I think there may be some confusion with the Master Boor Record (MBR) on
the hard disk which is read when booting up. The MBR ain't a partition
though; is much smaller; and won't show up in My Computer. (For more
details please Google or ask someone who knows more than me- there are
several here.)

No matter how good a friend s/he is, perhaps *not* someone to let free
to (try to) fix your PC

--
Robin
PM may be sent to rbw0{at}hotmail{dot}com