Inspiron 1318 Partitions

I was performing an image last night and I noticed that 3 partitions existed. C: drive (NTFS), D: drive (NTFS) (which has the dell restore image) and a blank Fat16 partition that is 39MB sized and 7.8MB used. Shows as a healthy partion under disk management in windows. I am not sure but is this used for booting purposes and where the boot files resides?

I am getting ready to repartition the harddrive with Acronis and wondering if I should leave that alone.?????

 

One partition (the FAT 16 one) is the Dell Diagnostics partition. If you have an issue and call support, they may ask you to run it and see what it says. You can also run it yourself at anytime if you need to check something.

I wouldn't worry about it if your system came with the "Drivers and Utilities" DVD. That has a copy of the diagnostics software on it. In addition, Dell has the Diagnostic program online in the Drivers & Downloads section.

 

I think you should leave the diagnostics partition alone. Its useful and takes up hardly any space at all.

 

Good call. If I were you I would kill the D: partition however and reclaim the drive space. For one thing, the drivers will be out of date at some point. For another, its like keeping the Vista install disk loaded into your computer. Basically a waste of space. I would also ditch the media partition - unless you like using it. I consider it redundant. The built in windows programs do the same thing. Kill those two and boom! 13Gb yours to play with.