What is this empty hard drive partition for? Can I reallocate the space?

Question

I decided to reallocate some hard drive space from one partition to the other (my laptop was sold partitioned). I thought it was partitioned in 2, but in the disc management tool it shows a third, much smaller partition with nothing on it called the primary partition, which has no drive name or file system. Is there a reason for this, or is the space just being wasted?

Answer 1

It won't be wasted, because you can resize, create, extend, shrink.... again. most new laptops occur the same question...

a guide to deal with it!

http://www.partition-magic.org/res/create-delete-format-partition.html.html



good luck :D

Answer 2

When you shrink one partition and then create a new one, if you don't pay attention to the screen, you will end up with a third one. This is normally caused by not assigning the second partition the full amount of space that is available. And yes you can use the third one by giving it a partition type and have it format it.



Or you can go back into the partitioning program, delete the third partition and then click on the second one and expand (re-size) it to the remaining disk space.

Answer 3

Primary partition



A primary partition contains one file system. In DOS and earlier versions of Microsoft Windows systems, the system partition was required to be the first partition. Windows operating systems must be located in a primary partition. Other operating systems do not have this requirement. However, other factors, such as a PC's BIOS (see Boot sequence on standard PC) may also impart specific requirements as to which partition must contain the primary OS.

Answer 4

Here is an article which introduce the detail operating instruction about your problem.

http://www.extend-partition.com/resource/shrink-volume-optimize-disk.html

Answer 5

it might be a swap partition. you should definately keep it.

Answer 6

this spece use to HD system drive

Answer 7

i would guess its the normal 100MBish partition windows makes while installing? why idk, never cared to check