EISA configuration

I have solved my EISA configuration problem. I have downloaded & registered a copy of Acronis Disc Director Suite, which has enabled me to recover the data to another drive for safety & then reformat the problem EISA configuratrion drive, thus destroying the data & then creating a new logical partition with a drive letter that reverts the USB drive back to its original state. I have then transferred the data back onto the usb drive and it is now has before with full acces to read, write & all you would expect to be able to do with an external usb drive. My copy of acronis cost £34 to register, the demonstration download only allows you to make small partitions, but is enough to demonstrate that it works without costing anything. But you will have to register a copy & pay to get full access to the programme to enable a solution to this problem. This may not be the best way of dealing with this problem but it worked for me. luckymusher

As mentioned by others above this partition is a special boot partition which is supposed to make it so you can take a few relatively simple steps to restore the system to it's original configuration. (FWIW, this restoration process is normally relatively idiot proof and even easier than using ghost as long as the restore data hasn't been deleted) Depending upon the system configuration deleting this partition could also make the system entirely unbootable so I would advise not to mess with it if the drive is the original boot drive.

That said..... The partition can be deleted from within Windows 2000/XP/Vista by running a command prompt and then Diskpart. (fdisk in Win 95/98) Using Diskpart type Help for a list of commands and be absolutely sure you know what your doing so you don't delete the wrong partition.

I just had the same problem with my acer, too. Basically, I had to restore my data from the hard drive using a program, then once I got the data back, I went to a partition program, deleted the partition, assigned the hard drive a letter, and it was as good as new....very tedious but worth it if you have important files to save. NEVER leave your HD hooked up to your pc when you do a system restore...I learned that the hard way

I believe that he EISA configured partition is where your computer manufacturers 'Restore System' data is kept so that you can't normally access it and mess it up. You seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to do work around that.
I would be interested to know if you can still restore your system now using the data that you transferred to a different partition?