Partition not getting recognised by XP...pls help

[dennisrobert]

My primary HDD is a SATA 80 GB one... I had an old IDE 40 GB HDD.Yesterday i plugged it into the motherboard with my dvd drive being the primary ide slave and this 40GB HDD being the master..
Evrrything was fine..XP detected both the dvd drive and hdd..
The 40GB HDD had 8 partitions!!I used Partition Magic Powequest to merge them into a single one...But upon merging the last 2 partitions,somehow the power got lost and when i restarted ,there is only 2 partitions now, one with 6GB and another one with 13 GB... XP is not detecting the 21GB partition...
When i opened Partition Magic, a message came saying about some recovery and i clicked YES, but it was showing "searching for recovery parameters" for quite a long time without any change (around 10 hours!!), so i quit the programme.Now when i open the Partition Magic, the 40GB partitions are all showing...But it has some problem.And XP is not detecting the 21 GB too...
Can i recover it?How? ...
Thanks...

 

[KSoD]

Delete all the partition. Do not just merge them. Just straight up delete them all. Then create one large one on the 40GB drive.

 

[forrestcupp]

Dlete all the partition. Do not just merge them. Just staraight up delete them all. Then create one large one on the 40GB drive.

Good advice, and a lot quicker, too.

 

[cichlidkeeper91]

Just Format the HDD

 

[KSoD]

Just Format the HDD

Sorry but doing this will not give them the full 40GB. It will only give them part of it as they have it partitioned off. Only by deleting all the partitions and then formatting will they have full use of the drive.