If its ok to wipe the whole disk, delete the other partition first and then see if it makes the whole disk available....

You cannot Install XP with FAT32 on drives bigger than 30 gigs.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=314463

If this is your goal then you need to boot a WIN98 startup disk and do FDISK and Format.

If you choose NTFS then it will allow you to delete all the partitions and format the whole thing.

WIN2000 and XP will FAIL if you choose FAT32 larger than 30 gigs.

 

 

For the first problem , it would appear you have the drive setup in different modes .

1: compatable , please check your jumpers .

There is a way of setting jumpers to restrict the drive to only the first 32 gigabytes , this is one way of seeing the other 8 gigabytes as another drive in the system , but not being able to do anything with it .

2: Watch those utilities .. some harddrive tools made by the manufacturers of the drives define the maximum partition as 32 gigabytes , and will therefore split the drive in that manner , cute , but very inaffective .

3: The chosen os and format may also have restrictions .

There are updated Fdisk.exe , Format.com files available to remove these restrictions and I have tested the under all windows os except for win95b fat16 and earlier without any problems .

4: It could be you are using fat32 formatted drive , and that other is in ntfs format , though this would be highly unlikely considering the first 3 mentioned before .

There's no restriction here ... but here's some further help on the subject and some usefull tools .

You need the updated format.com and fdisk file's for this , it dosent come in the os and from what I can recall , the limit is past 300gig partition , though why anyone would do such a thing ....

As for those who cant get rid of "partitions" , these would normally be ntfs partitions , and no , fdisk wont get rid of these ... Do a google search for DELPART , You need to add it to a bootable floppy as its dos based .

Some users may have difficulties using a boot floppy , where system just bypass's the disk .

Go into bios , and set all drives to "none" , this prevents windows me and xp from booting straight through to os .

Boot from floppy , when at a: , type delpart , and follow the prompts to remove ntfs partitions .

Should delpart report "unknown" , consider the drive worthy of replacement sooner rather than later , as this indicates problems in the mbr which may not be recoverable .

For me , I dont worry about that too much having backup system images anyway .

Remmember to backup all important data before doing so , as this will erase the boot information .

When done , reboot from floppy and use fdisk to create partitions as required , then reboot .

Here you should turn pc off , just do it or else format.com wont see the whole partition when you use it.

Now restart pc from floppy , and now run format.com , as in "format c:" .

When done , reboot pc , enter bios , reset all drives to previous settings , set system to boot from cdrom first , place choosen os cd into cdrom , save and exit .

You will now go through the os install process .

Tips :

A tool called partit , patition saver for xp .

Take hard drive to another xp system , and use partit to save the main partition .

Then use mbr-rescue too also backup the boot sector , just incase .

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Fix partition problems , then use partit too restore partition back to drive , and return drive to original pc , and you are done .

Its a tad slow , but I use nortons ghost and drive image 5 to backup my system in the event it gose out the window on me ... backup and running in less than 10 minutes ...

This should help keep many out of trouble .

 

There are updated FDISK there IS NOT AN UPDATED FORMAT.
If you can live with the fact that its cosmetic you do not need the patch to format the drive. Although it shows the wrong size when its done it does the whole drive and its correct. Its cosmetic not a functional issue.