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9 Replies Last post: May 19, 2008 1:50 AM by mcbarker

SolaiH

20 posts since
May 14, 2008

May 17, 2008 6:21 AM

Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

This sounds stupid but my hard drive is missing 11GB. My laptop's supposed to have a 160GB hard drive, I never thought of checking that but when I added the sizes of the partitions they turned out to be 149GB. Where'd the other 11GB go?! The only modification I did regarding the hard disk was partitioning & I made very sure that there isn't any unallocated space...so what's going on? Does Windows Vista use 11GB to partition or what?

Also when I bought the laptop, it had 2 partitions: "C" which was the main partition with the system files & "D" which is basically HP recovery. When I came to shrink the "C" I couldn't make it less than 78.7GB, why is that?

-SolaiH-

Reply Tags: hard_disk, partition

piyushsingh

2,378 posts since
Jul 21, 2007

1. May 17, 2008 7:14 AM

in response to: SolaiH

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

hello SolaiH

This is perfectly fine. The actual hard disk size shown by the OS is always less than that specified by the manufacturer for most of the OSes. The manufacturers use decimal base for their calculations i.e powers of 10. Whereas in binary the base is 2, most OS calculate space in powers of 2 and here the space goes missing.

Just take the example of a 20 GB drive as specified by the manufacturer . According to the manufacturer it has 20X1000X1000X1000 bytes of storage since individual bytes are addressable. This when seen by OS is (20X10^9 )/1024/1024/1024 which makes it approx. 18.6 GB. Same holds good for USB drives also.

Using this calculation , the 160GB will be 148.96GB, which is what vista is showing.

To put in simple words - 1GB is 1000MB for manufacturer but it is 1024 MB for the OS.

Nothing is true , Everything is permitted.

SolaiH

20 posts since
May 14, 2008

2. May 17, 2008 7:26 AM

in response to: piyushsingh

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

So that's how it's calculated...thanks alot piyushsingh, I was wondering where those 11GB went.

What about the partitioning? Why can't I shrink "C" more than 78.7GB?

piyushsingh

2,378 posts since
Jul 21, 2007

3. May 17, 2008 7:42 AM

in response to: SolaiH

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

SolaiH wrote:What about the partitioning? Why can't I shrink "C" more than 78.7GB?

Vista disk management will shrink the partitons easily but it sometimes limits the amount available for shrink due to some files present near the end of the drive . To increase the space available for shrink , run a defragmentation process and then try to shrink it again. It will definitely be more. Running the defrag process a couple of times in quick succession will help a bit more.

If this doesnt generate enough shrink space , then disable page file and sytem restore , restart and then defrag and shrink . After shrinking , enable the system restore and page file again .

Nothing is true , Everything is permitted.

coastie65

3,306 posts since
Apr 2, 2007

4. May 17, 2008 10:43 AM

in response to: piyushsingh

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

Hi piyush, The same runs true for memory as well. coastie

eMachines T5212.... Intel Pentium D 945 3.4Ghz..... evga 8600 GT 256 Mb PCI-E video card..... Realtec HD audio......2 Gb 533 Mhz DDR2 memory..... Lite on CD RW; DVD +R / RW DL optical drive...... Windows XP MCE 2005....... Antec Basiq 500w PSU......200 Gb PATA HDD

piyushsingh

2,378 posts since
Jul 21, 2007

5. May 17, 2008 4:55 PM

in response to: coastie65

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

hi coastie

ya you are right but the difference isnt much in case of memory due to less size as compared to hard disk.

Nothing is true , Everything is permitted.

jbking

966 posts since
Aug 29, 2006

6. May 17, 2008 9:52 PM

in response to: piyushsingh

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

Why I remember when I had a 4GB hard drive back in the day... I had to use 2 partitions for NT 4.0 on it a decade ago.....

Meanwhile, my girlfriend's laptop came with 4GB of RAM in it....

Home Desktop: VoodooPC Hexx. AMD Athlon FX-60, 2 GB RAM, 2 x 250 GB HD, 7900 GTX video card. Home Laptop: HP dv4000, Pentium M, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB HD, ATi 700 Radeon Mobility

SolaiH

20 posts since
May 14, 2008

7. May 18, 2008 12:43 AM

in response to: jbking

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

haha, & I bet when you had it everybody was like "Wooow, what are you gonna do with ALL that space??". The graphics card was what, about 8MB from what I recall?

rgreen4

3,644 posts since
Oct 22, 2006

8. May 18, 2008 9:50 AM

in response to: jbking

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

Back in the Day? I still have a PC with a 4GB hard drive. It an old Win98 machine, Intel PIII 750MHz and is currently in the closet.

Back in the Day? Our first PC at work that came with a "Fixed Disk" as they were called, was a True Blue PC - an IBM PC-XT with a 10MB Fixed Disk and

http://forums.pcworld.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/3773/emo_surprised.gif

a whopping 10 MB of disk space. Since floppies at that time were 360K only, it sure seemed like a lot. Now, some files are bigger than than. BTW it was 25 years ago.

mcbarker

688 posts since
Aug 10, 2006

9. May 19, 2008 1:50 AM

in response to: rgreen4

Re: Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

Until recently, I still had my old Tandy (Radio Shack) 1000SX which ran MS DOS, had a whopping 512 KB of RAM, and had, for its time, incredible 16 color graphics. I was in college, trying to get my computer programming degree, and figured I would need more space than the machine's two 5-1/4 inch floppy drives would allow, so I bought two 20 MB hard drives (or hardcards as they were called then). As SolaiH said, everyone wondered what I was going to do with all of that space.

SOME PEOPLE ARE LIKE SLINKIES - NOT REALLY GOOD FOR ANYTHING, BUT THEY BRING A SMILE TO YOUR FACE WHEN PUSHED DOWN THE STAIRS.

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This Question is Answered

May 17, 2008 6:21 AM

Hard Drive of Laptop Missing 11GBs of Space

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