Can't erase  one partition on my drive

I am trying to erase my hard drive. It is partitioned. I could not get rid of the partitions. I have erased and reinstalled system software on both partitions but no I can't access the larger partition as my startup drive. It does't show up.
What do I do?

TC & All:
Typically, all one has to do to reformat is to erase the entire drive (after backing up), as Tom Bryant advised in his post. (I offered the Partitioning method to filmlady as an alternative, because it sounds like she has a drive which has "stuck" partitions, and this sometimes helps to rectify the problem.)
Tom (Texas Mac Man) has given you some really good advice, IMO, regarding investing in a larger drive and using your current one for a bootable backup drive. If you shop around, you'll certainly find a deal online for an 80-120GB ATA drive, which will give you some working room. (Personally, I'd budget for two of them... one for a system/boot drive and the other to back up the system/boot drive, both installed internally. You'll be amazed at the flexibility this affords, relative to the restrictions you're facing now.)
Sales change virtually every week, so if you decide to go this route, keep on the lookout for a winner. I perused some sites just now, and provided some links below. There's a Hitachi 80GB drive for $30 and a Seagate 80GB for $40, for example. I'm not a fan of Hitachi's, but the price is right. Both of these drives have 2MB buffers, on the downside. An 8MB buffer would give you a "faster" drive and more bang for the buck. Next week you might find a 120GB drive with an 8MB buffer for $40...
Hitachi
Seagate
Western Digital
Maxtor
There are software solutions to repartitioning without having to erase the drive, but they cost money which could be better spent on an additional drive. Moreover, I sure wouldn't recommend using one of these programs without having a backup, so I don't see that they're very useful. I have the Drive Genius utility software which has this option, but am leery of using it, even with complete backups of my drives.
You could also backup your volumes to disks, erase the drive, and restore it. You might also have a friend willing to loan you a drive to do the backup/cloning. You might be surprised at how many relatively small drives there are floating around, mostly scrounged from old PCs.
Gary
1GH DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MH B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30   Mac OS X (10.4.2)   5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner
1GH DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MH B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30   Mac OS X (10.4.2)   5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner
1GH DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MH B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30   Mac OS X (10.4.2)   5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner

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