I just did some searching around and found some interesting information in the forums o'er at Dell. It seems that I'm not nearly the only person with this issue, and I don't believe it is a hardware failure. My experience with PC's has shown me a gazillion ways for files and storage space to get corrupted, and often the only fix is to reformat. In my case, at least, I'm more than willing to reformat the Built-In Memory, but I haven't found a utility to do it. According to "Codezilla" from the Dell forums, such a utility is very possible to create, but I don't know if anyone has actually done so.
Here's a snippet from 'Codezilla's post:
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Quote:
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Intel StrataFlash memory is not your everyday flash ROM. It contains special features that allow it to be divided into partitions that can serve different purposes. The file partition is completely separate from the OS partition and can be formatted independently.
The file partition is accessed through an installable file system provided by Intel call the Persistent Storage Manager (PSM). Here is a quote from Chapter 4 of the Intel Persistent Storage Manager User's Guide - Formatting the File Partition:
OEMs need not wait for a cold boot to do a format; they can cause a format at any time by calling FG_Init and passing a pointer to both an empty buffer for a memory map structure (type PSM_OEMInfo) and to a structure of type PSM_FormatOptions.
FG_Init is a function or method in a dll provided as part of PSM that performs the actual formatting. So, no, a formatting utility for Built-in Storage would not wipe out the operating system.
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It seems like this sort of Utility would be invaluable, so where is it??? The only other suggested solution is to swap hardware with Dell. I suspect Dell will get tired of doing exchanges every time somebody needs to reformat. ...I know I would.