i bought a dell laptop a few weeks ago,inspiron e1505, the hard drive was partioned with a 20g 'D' drive labeled 'backup' i assume dell does this for a reason???

norton ghost was pre-installed and when i tried to config it stated it was a 'trial version' good for x amount of days, order online for authorization code....no big deal didn't want it anyway so i uninstalled it

then i installed norton systemworks, including norton go back....now my 'D' drive states it is unformatted and 'RAW'....i assume norton go back as taken over this 'drive', correct?

so after giving it some thought, i really don't think i need norton go back either and i want to uninstall that, however, will the 'D' partition still be unacccesible after norton go back is removed? i assume norton did something to the drive such that nothing else could access it, will it revert back to being accesible?.....i would like to be able to access the 'D' drive

i did search and look into it on dells site but could not find a specific answer, and i know if i call dell i will get frustrated..

anyone have any insight on this? thanks

I'm not very familiar with the latest versions of Ghost or Systemworks, but from what I know...

1. It's common for laptop vendors to reserve a partition on your HD for "backup purposes." I assume - based on the fact that your D: drive was originally labelled "backup" - that Dell configured your laptop in this fashion.

2. Systemworks probably wouldn't "take over" an entire partition then make it unreadable. I know that Systemworks reserves space on your drive for various rollback features, but what you're describing is a partition on your hard drive that Windows can't read. I highly doubt that uninstalling Systemworks will make the partition accessible.

3. Time to call some guy in India for help. It's possible you'll need to boot your laptop into recovery mode and reformat the partition - NOT the whole drive, just the partition - because when Windows reports a drive as "raw/unformatted," you're pretty much F'ed.

i'm gonna try and uninstall norton goback tonight....i read earlier today something to the effect of goback altering the partition such that no other program (even xp) could use it

Let me know how it works out. I'm curious if Norton really is responsible for the "raw/unformatted" message you're getting in XP for your D: drive - I'd be very surprised. It seems ridiculous to me that they would plunder a 20 gig partition for backup purposes then make it invisible/unreadable to the primary operating system.

i uninstalled the goback portion of system works...surprisingly for a symantec product, the uninstall (while it took a while) went smoothly with no glitches.....once i re-booted 'drive d' is once again accesible and lists as NSFT format....so goback won't be going back!