Small, Empty Partition

I was installing Gentoo when I ran into out-of-room errors, so I had to go back into Windows to do some partition resizing. In the Disk Management tool, I noticed that there is a small, empty partition in addition to the Windows and Linux partitions. The tool lists it as a 39 MB primary partition.

Is this safe to delete? What is it there for?

EDIT: Some more details about the partitions:

[No name] 39 MB healthy EISA (mystery partition)
RECOVERY (D:) 14.65 GB healthy NTFS (for backups and such, factory-made)
OS (C:) 449.07 GB healthy NTFS (Windows)

Maxpm

Posted 2011-06-04T01:38:58.350

Reputation: 195

Can you provide additional details about the partitions such as their types and file allocation system (i.e. FAT)? – Zian Choy – 2011-06-04T01:49:17.883

@Zian Sure. See my edit. – Maxpm – 2011-06-04T01:58:01.400

If you had given the output of the list partition command from diskpart, you would have provided enough information for people to give you more than "If you have a Dell, it's most likely this." answers. – JdeBP – 2011-06-05T13:30:15.907

Answers

When I've seen a small EISA partition like that before, it's been the storage area for the Dell recovery and diagnostics tool (not the actual OS image or anything; just the tools themselves). If you have a Dell (or any other mainstream manufacturer like HP), that's likely what the partition holds.

squircle

Posted 2011-06-04T01:38:58.350

Reputation: 6 365

It would be a bad idea to delete it, then? (Not that I would; it's too small to be worthwhile.) – Maxpm – 2011-06-04T02:14:42.457

@Maxpm I'd say so. Besides, you've got tons of other space; no need to cause potential problems. (Also worth noting is that the recovery image in the second partition is most likely useless without the first partition). – squircle – 2011-06-04T02:16:34.543

It is probably a diagnostic tool partition. Dell laptops have such such a partitions that is accessed by holding the Fn key during boot and contains a self-test suite. I would keep it, it's handy if your computer ever starts acting up. – jcrawfordor – 2011-06-04T03:58:54.510