Recovery partition after initial Vista U start up

During the first start up of Vista Ultimate 32 on a new Dual Core machine
the install appeared to hang. The mouse moved but a Dos like window just
appeared and no activity was obvious after 30 minutes. I rebooted and the
installation continued and appeared uneffected. Examining the Windows
Explorer there is a 6 gigabyte partition (300 Gig Drive) with some Windows
folders, Dell folders , programs folders, Tools, Users and Souces. I can't
make sense of it. Could this be something the machine folks placed since
some files are dated 11/2006?

Any ideas appreciated. Mark S