different formatting programs can format the drive slightly differently for instance win xp disc is not really a good formatting program as it soes not wipe the drive totally clean where as pq magic is more powerfull and it wipes the drive clean the only way around this as i have had the same problem is to format into fat 32 with pq magic as i think it will not let you format to NTFS then goto put a win 98 or win me boot disc or floppy disc and reboot and use the fdisk then put a clean installation of windows on and as it goes through the setup when it gets to the formatting stage highlight the format to NTFS not the quick format to NTFS once windows is on and you run pq magic it should then show the drive in pink and NTFS i know its a lemgthy process but unless you are willing to put a new instation on then it will just stay the same. If its all running ok then just leave it until you have to.Hope this all makes sense but i think pq magic is great it all i use to format my drives.Hope all this helps and good luck