[phatboyheavy]

reformatted drive and assigned letter which solved the problem... Until I tried to 'copy disk' using Paragon Hard Disk Manager again. It seems to turn the external disk into an unlettered partition of my main drive - prior to formatting I deleted the partitions mentioned above, which I then realised seemed to be part of my main drive (thought I'd messed up), but after formatting and then 'copying' again, they've re-appeared, at the same time the disk has disappeared from 'Explorer' again. I'm going to reformat again and try a back up rather than a copy. If the problem persists I may re-post this on the 'applications' forum as it may be the software - I probably just don't understand it. Will post conclusion

Thanks again,

Graeme