About HDD Partitions

[ican2k]

I have an WD 80GB SATA HDD in my dell c531. Disk manager shows three partitions 39MB fat EISA config, a 79.46GB NTFS, and a 3mb unknown. My plan is to clone this drive to a larger one. Before I do this should I remove the two smaller partitions, and what is their purpose?

 

[Ijack]

The 39MB partition on Dells usually contains some sytem tools to help with recovery (it should detail this in your manual). I don't know about the 3MB one; at that size I can't see that it's anything important, on the other hand 3MB isn't much to lose so I'd be inclined to leave it.

The safest option would be to keep the partitions as they are and risk wasting that 42GB. If you're moving to a larger hard disk, expand the NTFS partition but leave the other two as they are.

 

[ican2k]

The 39MB partition on Dells usually contains some sytem tools to help with recovery (it should detail this in your manual). I don't know about the 3MB one; at that size I can't see that it's anything important, on the other hand 3MB isn't much to lose so I'd be inclined to leave it.

The safest option would be to keep the partitions as they are and risk wasting that 42GB. If you're moving to a larger hard disk, expand the NTFS partition but leave the other two as they are.

Thanks;

I am installing a larger HDD 500GB. So I will take your advise and expand the NTFS partition and leave the other two as they are.

PS: new drive installed used Acronis True Image to clone the old drive. Woking great.

 

[ican2k]

Best answer selected by ican2k.