WindowsProb? BackupDrive Issue

Not sure if the this is the right place for this question, but if not
someone will advise, I'm sure.

We built a WinXP PC from stuff we had in the house and it's up and
running just fine. We decided to setup an external hard drive to be used
for backups only. The case is a NextStar3. We had a couple of old
Samsung 8GB drives which were partitioned and formatted. We left it as
Fat32.

We put the drive in the case; attached it to the PC; Windows found the
new external....not a problem. It's a USB

My husband said he wanted to test the drive by dragging "My Pictures"
folder into the drive. And, it worked great. Now, he deletes the
pictures, reformats the drive and there are artifacts from what appears
to be the forward and back arrows from Windows Picture and Fax viewer
and another icon or two...I don't remember which ones when he opens the
drive....no folders appear just the remnants of Win P&F viewer. It seems
he dragged the Sample picture folder as well. I watched the drive format
and you would think the drive would be clean after a format, but it
isn't. Additionally, and I don't have clue why this would be, his
Favorites folder(from IE7) opens up on the view menu.

We loaded no drivers when the drive was attached. The documentation with
the case said none were needed for Win XP. I have never seen a situation
where a format didn't wipe the drive clean. Can someone make some
recommendations as to how to solve this problem.

WinXP SP2, 1GB ram, Nvidia 6800, 80GB Western Digital EIDE; S/B Audigy
card; Intel Nic and not much else of importance. TIA

Diane