hard drive?

Question

I have an 80 gb hard drive but when i go to my computer my local disk c's total is 50 gb. my local disk d's total is only 17gb. where is the other 13 gb. I have a dell E1505

Answer 1

Dell uses a portion of your hard drive to store the Restore image. It is on a hidden partition that you cannot see from My Computer. Also, Windows does not view drive sizes the same as the hard drive mfr. A brand new, empty 100GB hd, might only appear as 92GB (rough estimate) formatted.

I note a lot of misconception being posted here, concerning the OS making the hard drive look smaller. This is not the case. When you look in My Computer, and you see the Total Size versus Free Space, the questioner is wondering about Total Size (I think). While Dell sells the computer with an 80GB listing, they do hide part of that drive, thus affecting the Total Size. This is how Dell makes things easier for you, and their support, if you ruin your installation with viruses, etc. They can simply talk you through making your computer exactly like you received it, without taking it to them for help.

Likewise, if you buy a Dell with 1GB of memory (RAM) and you are using on-board video, when you look at the System Properties (rt clk My Computer, Properties), it appears that you only have maybe 800+MB of RAM. Did Dell short change you? No. Part of that RAM is reserved for processing video.

I dont mean to sound like im picking on Dell (I highly recommend them), every PC mfr has similiar practices.

Answer 2

It could be 1 of 2 things.

1) The 13Gigs in question was not partitioned when windows was installed, you could use a program like partition magic to fix that without reinstalling windows.

Or

2) As rediculus as this sounds, Hard drives always say 80Gig 120Gig 200Gig etc. when in actuality it only will allocate 72Gigs or 112Gigs. Even more strange is it's different for just about every hard drive. I have personally purchased a Seagate 200Gig Hard Drive, formated it, and only had is allocate 186Gigs.

Answer 3

Check in the admin tools to see if there is another partition on the disk drive...

There may be a third (non-DOS) partition that is used just for holding the recovery disk information... basically the Windows install stuff, programs to use it to install your PC and programs to make CD copies of the install images.

That won;t use all of the space... a small amount will go in 'formatting' and lost in the different way that disk sizes are calculated (ie 1Gb = 1000Mb or 1Gb = 1024Mb depending if you are selling disk or calculating sizes in Windows.

Answer 4

Chances are it is taken up by your operating system, whether it be Windows XP or Windows Vista. When they advertise you get a 80 gb drive, it is almost misleading since some of it is being used right off the bat for the operating system. Unfortunately, you can't just delete that to give yourself more room.

Answer 5

The other 13 gb goes the window programs that came with your computer.

Answer 6

The other 13 gb is used to run the system. there are files that your OS needs to run. 13 gb isn't that much. I bought a 320 gb, but can only use 288 of it.

Answer 7

Some of it is taken up to have windows on your computer. Also, George C is right about what happens to hard drives. They may say one amount but may be slightly less. This amount of space that isn't there grows as you get a bigger hard drive.

Answer 8

Your best bet would be to join Dell's Community Forum so you could discuss things with other Dell users. I found it very helpful. Before you make contact, get out your order number, customer number, SN of computer, anything to identify yourself as a valid customer.

https://support.dell.com/support/index.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs

Answer 9

Your hard drive maybe partitioned into 2 drives. Go into my computer, and if you see to hard disk icons, then your one drive is partitioned.

Answer 10

Normally, only a certain per centage of the hard drive space is available for use!