I have Windows XP Home Edition with the NTFS file system, but there is also a section of the hard disk that is FAT32. This is completely inaccessible to me (although I am the administrator), and to any clean-up program I know of. What is it for? Maurice B Line
It's increasingly common for manufacturers to ship PCs with one or more DOS (FAT32) partitions as well as the NTFS (New Technology File System) from Windows NT/2000/XP. The first will be a small partition at the start of the drive. This generally holds diagnostic utilities that will be used if something bad happens to your Windows system. A second partition may be added at the end of the drive. This could include a back-up image of the original Windows installation, to make it simple to revert the PC to its factory condition without using a CD. This will obviously need to be larger -- perhaps 2GB to 4GB.
You can see your drive set-up by right-clicking on the My Computer icon and clicking Manage to run the Computer Management utility. Go to the Storage section and click Disk Management.
My current Dell drive starts with a 63MB FAT partition, which is followed by the NTFS drive, then a 2.94GB "ghost" partition.
