What is the purpose of the HP 199 MB system partition?

[harpua]

I recently got a new HP laptop that came with W7 preloaded. The main hard drive that contains the OS came divided into 4 partitions: System (199 MB), C: (containing the OS), E: (HP Tools), and G: (Recovery).

I understand what HP_Tools is for (more or less), Recovery partition is for, and what C: is for, but I don't understand what the 199 MB SYSTEM partition is for.

The SYSTEM partition in question is marked as "System, Active, Primary Partition", and C: is marked as "Boot, page file, crash dump, Primary Partition." I have attached a screenshot of the way the drive appears in Disk Management below.

Anyone know why HP would have created this tiny partition and what it is for?

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

 

[whs]

As it says, this is your active (Boot) partition. If you play with it, your system will not boot any more. It serves some other purposes for the Ultimate edition of Win7 (e.g. Bitlocker).

 

[Crispy]

All HP, Compaq and so on make partitions what they call "recovery" its all to do with how they recover the system.

 

[whs]

All HP, Compaq and so on make partitions what they call "recovery" its all to do with how they recover the system.

There is a recovery partition which is usually around 10GBs, but that has nothing to do with the little 199MB partition (sometimes it is only 100MB depending on OEM).