What went wrong with my XP reformat?

[Colliwog]

It's been a few years since I've reformatted, and I feel my poor comp may be in need of one.
However, I've been reluctant to do this, because when I reformatted it the first (and only) time, something went wrong. The reformat only took about half hour (I hear it's supposed to take a couple to several hours?), and it put a second copy of XP on my comp- the original copy became inaccessible after the reformat, and just sits on my comp taking up space.

Can anyone tell me how this happened? I'm so afraid of trying to reformat again, only to end up with 3 copies of XP on my comp!

 

[Tedster]

not an issue. When you format, you must do a COMPLETE low level format of the drive.

You can obtain any # of low level formatting tools online free of charge. (freeware)

XP should have low level formatted before installation. You probably did not select the correct option.

Delete ALL partitions BEFORE installing the OS. This is an option in XP installation.
Then create the partition(s) you want.

XP should be on the C: partition.