PARTITION NOT RECOMMENDED TO DELETE BY DELL

I have recently purchased an Inspiron XPS which was shipped with Windows XP home. But I have recently purchased a copy of XP Pro for security and network reasons as I will be lugging it to class.

Upon a clean installation of the XP Pro, I've noticed that my 80 GB hd were partitioned into 2, with one of them being only 47 MB with no drive letter and is using FAT file system. I called Dell tech support about this, and I was told to leave that partition alone as it contained important files and program that I might need for any problems I may have with the computer in the future.

Does anyone have any idea what's on that partition and how important it is to keep it there? As I've read that many of you on the forum recommends formatting the hd upon receipt of a new Dell system to rid of excess garbage installed on there. Is that partition considered garbage, or is it actually going to be useful in the future?

I also have 2 Dimension systems that's about 10 yrs old when added together, but I've never seen such a partition in either of them.

Any insight on this matter will be appreciated!

Cheers!

 

I see no reason to keep any of the partitions. If something were to ever go wrong with your computer, all you would need is the Windows XP CD, and the drivers which you can get from Dell's website.

 

ACJX880

Everyone who uses Windows has this small partition, most people don't know they have it because it is unformatted and therefore won't show up.
It does not matter if you delete it or not, Windows will automatically remake it when you reinstall, and theres nothing you can do about it. It is necessary for Windows to have to perform efficiently.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for your quick replies guys!

I've already formatted my hd twice without deleting that particular partition, and as IllegalOperation has mentioned that all Windows has this small partition, does this only apply to Windows XP? As I've not see it on my desktops which had Win98 ansd 2K.

Also as I remembered, the 1st time I formatted the hd, there was the 2 partitions, unlabeled 47mb and the rest 74gb as one partition. I then deleted the big partition and further partitioned the 74gb into 2 smaller drives, and for some reason there is always 8mb of unpartitioned space left, which is what IllegalOperation was talking about (I think), so I'm guessing the hd is not completely formatted as I had tried to format twice after to reinstall Win XP Pro and I didn't have to re-enter the product key eventhought the size of the partitioned drives were different each time and I ran the full format on each of the partitio, thus the product key info is probably kept on that unlabeled partition.

So now my question is: Is this another way of MS to keep their tabs on software piracy, such as the Windows Media Player, or is it just a backdoor they've made for system recovery/restore, i.e. image of the registry?

'hunterb' has also posted a similar question in this forum about his 8600, but it's even more wierd that his hd was initially partitioned into 3 partitions.

There is much for me to learn about Win XP as MS seems to just want to ship out as many new products as they can to capitalize on the profit, without extensive product testing, which is why they've setup an 'update' site for pretty much all their softwares, plus friends that works @ IBM tech support has received notice from his superiors to NOT touch SP2, nor do they warrant software problems after customers install SP2.

I'll see what else I can dig up on this weird partition, and in the mean time, I'll start to enjoy my new laptop and maybe even provide a review on it. My girlfriend has put an order thru for a 700m last week, so when it arrives I'll likely format her hd as well, and see if it much different.

Thank you once again for your inputs and two-thumbs up for running such an informative site as it has so much to offer for all levels of computer users.

Got a 8:30 class tomorrow morning... so gotta jet!

Cheers!

 

Sorry that I did not have enough time last night to explain this in greater detail. Although Microsoft is quite capable of your questionable accusations, this is not the case in this situation.

When you use Windows XP Setup to create a new drive and you choose to use all the available space, Setup leaves approximately 8 megabytes (MB) of unpartitioned space so you can convert the drives to a dynamic volume.

If you partitioned the drive before running setup, using any of the following operating systems, the 8 MB unpartitioned space is hidden:

MS-DOS
Microsoft Windows 95
Microsoft Windows 98
Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
Microsoft Windows 2000

If this peaks your curiosity, you may learn more about Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000/XP by following this link
<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q175/7/61.ASP&NoWebContent=1<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>


Edited couldnt get the link to work right

 

Dear IllegalOperation,

Thank you for your detailed explanation on the workings of MS Windows, but originally I posted this thread to inquire about the unlabeled partition (47MB), which I was told by a Dell tech support that I should not delete as it would be useful to me if the system ever crashed.

Secondly, why is it that when partitioning the HD, after I've entered a desired 1st partition size, several mb are removed from my entry? i.e. "32768 mb" entered and end up with "32765 mb" of partition, and "28672 mb" entered, but ended up with "28671 mb" as my partiton size. (This is the size for the 1st partition, and the second partiion would automatically have the "8mb" put aside as 'unpartitioned space'.

I'm still curious as to where the product key is stored as I don't have to re-enter it after a full-format, and I'll have a look at the link you've provided as well as the MS and Dell knowledgebase for answers.

Thank you for your help once again!

Cheers!