Thank you, Gentlemen,
There's some food for thought there. I'll investigate possibilities in the next day or two.
SD:
No, the PC is only about three years old and has only ever been used for Linux distros.
It just occurred to me that there may have been some parallel with the early XP limitations on HDD size although I was unaware of the cause behind that limitation. There are a great many things that I do not understand, this is but one of them!
Thanks again chaps
N o t a