Partition Mtstery

I have a 1 TB hard drive installed on my computer which I back-up every two weeks on an external 1 TB hard drive using Macrium Reflect through a USB port. Normally, before I use Reflect, I go to Disk Management to delete the existing previous clone on the back-up hard drive to create a fresh partition to clone too. I also use AOMEI Partition Assistant to delete the Recovery Partition which Disk Management won't do. With the fresh hard drive partition I then use Reflect to clone the exterior back-up drive. Usually when doing this procedure all three applications (Disk Management, AOMEI, and Reflect) showed two partitions - Windows 10 Professional and the Recovery Partition. Lately, things have gotten a little confusing - Disk Management shows: Windows 10 Professional, Recovery Partition & 3 MB Unallocated Space - AOMEI shows: Widows 10 Professional, Recovery Partition, and 3 separate partitions of unallocated space (1 MB, 664.50 KB, 1.71 MB), Reflect shows the standard Windows 10 Professional and NTFS Primary Partition which (when I begin the cloning it tells me the geography is different on the drive and recommends using the original drive configuration which I do). I guess my question is how did these unallocated partitions get there and can I merge the unallocated partitions with the Windows 10 partition or just leave it as is? would merging them cause a problem?

Sorry you have not received an answer. It is not that you were being ignored. I just don't have an answer for you.

I can only assume those tiny (very tiny!) extra partitions were somehow created because the minimum number of sectors needed to create a cluster was not met and those were stragglers. Or perhaps they were bad. I just don't know. I'm only guessing. 

If me, I would probably start over with that drive. That is, I would back up all the data to a different drive. Then delete and re-create only the partitions I want with a full format (not Quick) on each. 

That said, not sure I would trust that drive. Just another reason robust backup plans involve having multiple backups - preferably with at least one backup stored "off-site". 

Thanks for the reply, no problem. It's not that important. I just used a new external Drive - solved the problem.

Great. And thanks for coming back and posting your solution!