Format affect on Partition Status

[Deskstar]

Does a reformat of a secondary hard drive using Windows XP My Computer screen erase a Partition's designation of "Active" or "Basic"?

I know that a "Quick Format" does not do so. I suspect that I have to boot from an XP CD and then delete the secondary drive's partition, then initialize and reformat it in XP.

 

[Nothinman]

Formatting doesn't touch the partition table at all. And Active and Basic are totally unrelated attributes, infact Basic isn't a partition attribute at all.

 

[Deskstar]

Nothinman,

Thank you for the explanation. Of course, you are right that the two are not related. Regardless of the reason, my problem of not being able to boot into Windows has been solved by deleting the partition on the secondary drive and then reinstalling/reformating that drive. The drive now shows up without the "Active" label (Basic & Healthy) and what must have been system/boot files on both drives have now converted to files only on the primary disk. Bingo.

Thank you for answering.