Source of Unknown Disk Partition?

[Guest]

I recently formatted my external hard drive to change it from FAT32 to NFTS.
While doing so, I noticed that my internal hard drive (this is a new Dell PC)
had a 4.64GB partition that the system didn't recognize ("unknown"). I was
going to remove it but the warning message gave me second thoughts.

Is there any way to know what that partition is and whether it can be deleted?

I have a couple of thoughts as to how this may have been created:

1) I attempted to use the NT Backup to backup to my external hard drive
(then formatted as FAT32). I was doing a full system backup. The backup
stopped at around 4.64 GB because of the FAT32 limitations. Could this have
created a partition on my internal drive?

2) I deleted a lot of old data that I removed from my old PC that was
stored on my new external hard drive. I did this while it was still
formatted as a FAT32 drive, and prior to reformatting. Is it possible that
Windows XP created a HD partition to store this in prior to my deleting the
files?

Thanks for the help. I suppose this partition isn't really hurting anything
(its only 4.64GB or a 320GB HD), but I don't like the idea of the drive being
wasted with any unused FAT32 partition.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I recently formatted my external hard drive to change it from FAT32
to NFTS. While doing so, I noticed that my internal hard drive
(this is a new Dell PC) had a 4.64GB partition that the system
didn't recognize ("unknown"). I was going to remove it but the
warning message gave me second thoughts.

Is there any way to know what that partition is and whether it can
be deleted?

I have a couple of thoughts as to how this may have been created:

1) I attempted to use the NT Backup to backup to my external hard
drive (then formatted as FAT32). I was doing a full system backup.
The backup stopped at around 4.64 GB because of the FAT32
limitations. Could this have created a partition on my internal
drive?

2) I deleted a lot of old data that I removed from my old PC that
was
stored on my new external hard drive. I did this while it was still
formatted as a FAT32 drive, and prior to reformatting. Is it
possible that Windows XP created a HD partition to store this in
prior to my deleting the files?

Thanks for the help. I suppose this partition isn't really hurting
anything (its only 4.64GB or a 320GB HD), but I don't like the idea
of the drive being wasted with any unused FAT32 partition.

Dell Recovery/Diagnostic Partition.
Read your manual/ask Dell.