Can someone help me figure out what this unidentifiable "Data" partition is on my used ASUS Windows 7 latptop?

wwymd3

Estimable
Jun 18, 2015
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I recently fried my video card on my HP 2000 laptop by being careless with the HDMI output. I thought finding a replacement PC was hopeless until my mother dropped her ASUS notebook and broke the display. She wasn't upset by the incident since the PC is 4 years old. Despite it's age the ASUS technically faster then my HP, but it's hard drive is nearly 30% fragmented and to my knowledge the OS and applications have never been updated or maintained.
After hours of updates and several passes with defragmenter, I managed to finish updating windows and got the fragmented drive down to 20%. The C:\ is only 120 GB, which I thought was strange, but then I found a 153 GB partition labeled "Data" containing 2 folders totaling 103 MB combined. One of the folders is empty (labeled "Firefox") and the other (labeled "ff311dea8767b3a428f2a34a61023aa5") is protected with security permissions containing multiple folders (labeled with 4 digits ranging from 1025-3082) and miscellaneous files that don't aide in identifying the purpose of the partition. The only meaningful file name is "NDP40-KB2804576.msp" which google identified as a windows security update file.

I know the obvious solution is a clean windows install and starting fresh, especially considering I have no use for anything she had previously installed. The problem lies within my moms distrust of technology... She insisted upon giving the PC that I not delete anything until she purchases a new system. It's ridiculous, but so is attempting to reason with her. She has no idea what the partition is and had no knowledge of it being modified years after she started using the PC.

I'm thinking this partition may be a backup partition. I couldn't confirm this and have no clue what this large unused chunk of disk spaces is set aside for.

Can someone please advise:
1. A way to identify the purpose of this partition
2. Fully defragment the C: drive
3. Backup her system image or files to a external drive allowing a clean windows 7 install, but also allowing a re-install of her system image in case she request the PC back.

 
Solution
sometime laptop come with 2 partition, one for os and one for data. sound like that what it happen.

If the system work fine and your mom don't want you to change it, don't change it.
else, you could get a 3rd partition management software to merge the 2 together. But always backup the important data before doing so.

rgd1101

Don't
Moderator
sometime laptop come with 2 partition, one for os and one for data. sound like that what it happen.

If the system work fine and your mom don't want you to change it, don't change it.
else, you could get a 3rd partition management software to merge the 2 together. But always backup the important data before doing so.
 
Solution