I bought a new PC that came with 100GB hard drive, but in windows it says only 97GB is free? What's happening?

Question

Please help me, I don't know anything about computers!

Answer 1

The 'reported' capacity of a hard drive is the total raw, unformatted maximum. When a drive is formatted, the operating system that formatted it takes up space for things like the file allocation tables, etc... So, when you see a drive's capactiy, you can deduct about 1-5% for system overhead...

Answer 2

Depending on the operating system you use, It may require some space from your hard drive. It may range from about a few MB (1 Megabyte = 1,048,576 bytes) to a few GB (1 Gigabyte = 1073741824). Another factor can be caused by the file system you use. A file system is like a program that keeps track of your files. It is responsible for writing, reading, and listing out the files in your hard disk. Some file system may support compressions like NTFS which may help you save some space. Sometimes, the problem is with the product itself. It happened to me once when I bought a new hard drive that says 60 GB and installed it, it says only 55 GB. But this rarely happens.

Answer 3

This is normal. Either part of your hard drive is dedicated to a seperate partition, is unpartitioned, or the measurement of the drive capacity was done in decimal rather than binary. Any of these would explain the difference. If it says '97GB available', then it's because of these reasons. If it says '97GB free', it's because you have installed files or software (including the OS).

Answer 4

the reason why windows is indicating that you have 97 GB is because the operating system(windows) files and program files are already resident in the hard disk thus occupying 3GB ...and if it does not contain any files or the operating system then it means that there is some 3GB un-partitioned space in your hard disk to recover this space try to format again using dos ...it will give you 100 gb (do this only if you dont have anything in the harddisk...really empty or use partition magic )

Answer 5

The partition system used by windows takes 300 Mb, ant the amount of your HDD is not 100 Gb, it's almost that sum. No one is messing you, it's just because of the difference between bit and byte.

1 B (byte)= 8 b (bit)
1 MB = 1024 KB >>> after some GB transformation, your HDD is more like 98,9999999 GB. Take the 300 MB from windows FAT/NTFS partition ... you'll get your true value.

Answer 6

the three GB is in many circumstances used as restoration partion, once you do your gadget fix to production unit settings it runs all the purposes alongside with your working gadget XP setup data are saved in that 3 GB. the three GB has the abode windows setup data and all the business enterprise's put in application's setup data are savied in that 3GB. you may verify it : top click on MY computing device . Left click on handle. And Left click on DISK administration. you will see your self your complete 100GB with 3 GB separeated.

Answer 7

thats ok windows takes up about 1 - 2gb on the hard drive and the manufacture may have put preinstalled software on it like burning programs or antivirus subscriptions. its ok 97GB is plenty

Answer 8

When you format a virgin hard drive 3 to 10 percent of the drive is given to the file allocation tables
The amount depends on the OS (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc),
And on the file-system used (FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, etc)

Answer 9

the reason why windows is indicating that you have 97 GB is because the operating system(windows) files and program files are already resident in the hard disk thus occupying 3GB ...and if it does not contain any files or the operating system then it means that there is some 3GB un-partitioned space in your hard disk to recover this space try to format again using dos ...it will give you 100 gb (do this only if you dont have anything in the harddisk...really empty or use partition magic )

Answer 10

Most likely this is Windows and whatever software came preloaded on your computer. The manufacturer probably also included several backup files for restoring your computer.