simple question RE: unused space on HDD

Hello,

After looking under disk management to resolve my drive letter problem (thanks for your help usafveteran) I noticed that there is an unpartitioned segment of 21gig.

I already have the disk split into 3 partitions of about 40 to 50gig each with their own installation of XP pro SP2 on.

If someone can tell me where to retrieve the system specs from I will post them as I have no idea, yup, I'm a real noob

So, my question is, can I format and use this free space or is it already serving some purpose I'm not aware of. I seem to remember reading somewhere that it is not possible to have more than 3 partitions on 1 hard disk.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks for taking the time to read this. :major

 

I had 5 on xp home. If it were me I would use it to hold an image of my os as a backup. If you have a disaster or problems with your system just restore it from the backup image and your good to go.

 

The following comes from http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1778&page=10:

go into disk manager by right clicking 'my computer' and selecting 'manage.' Once you are in the management screen, select 'disk management.' From here, the unpartitioned space on your hard disk can be seen as the black 'unpartitioned space' section in the graphic display on the bottom pane. Simply right click the unused space and select 'new partition' to use this space. The wizard will walk you through creating, sizing and formatting the partition with NTFS or FAT32.