I suspected that either you or Gizmo would lend their expertise to this one, thank you.
I guessed that it would require editing the Master Boot Record...
Got that far, but then lack of experience impeded me... never had to do this before - also tbh I am not clear if the MBR is written to the hard disk surface itself... "some utilities that can wipe the first 128 sectors of the disk to ensure that it looks like a brand new pristine disk" I take it that this means that it probably is & commonly occupies this (reserved) space.
Can you recommend one of the best tools for this Áedán?
(PS if you see this would you be kind enough to explain precisely why selecting certain partition dimensions during XP setup result in them being adjusted by a small number of MB sometimes, & the figure input being the accepted size at others? I have yet to find a theoretical or otherwise explanation of this - is it something to do with the rounding operation required of the partition creator? Also there seems to be a perpetual 8MB 'end' partition - what is this for?)