hard drive problem

I have been changing my system around and i came across a 300gb external hard drive so i plugged it in and brought it up on the PC, now for some reason it is split into 3 sections 2 of which are empty and a few bits and pieces on the third.

It will let me format each individual part but not the whole thing and i would like to get it back to it's original state of 1 drive.

is there any way i can amalgamate the 3 sections (i did not say partitions because i can not get into the drive as one unit)

can you help me???:confused

 

Maybe you've tried this: right click My Computer > Manage > Disk Management. Then locate the drive in the right pane. Starting with the last section/partition, right click it and select 'delete partition'. Then move to the 2nd section and do it again, then to the first section. When it's all done, you should have one large 'unallocated' section. You can then right click it and set it up as a single drive/partition. There's plenty of 3rd party tools that can do this also. You can try Swiss Knife or take a look at the Drive Utilities here at Major Geeks.

[dlb] :-D