Help! HD smaller than it should be on Vostro 1500?

OK, Gods of the Gigabyte, I need your advice, please:

My Vostro arrived in the mail the other day. I fired it up and checked its properties to make sure I'd gotten what I paid for.

But the hard drive says it only has 230 GB instead of the 250 I paid for--and that's the total space. (I realize the OS uses space, but I'm talking about the total including the portion denoted as already occupied, I assume by the OS.) Yeah, "only" 230 isn't small by any means--but I just want what I paid for. I've yet to do anything on the computer, so it's not files that I've created. I haven't even saved a Word doc or hooked up to the Internet at all.

Before I call Dell and complain, is there something I should know (to quote Duran Duran)? Is that extra 20GB hidden somewhere else? I actually saw the 230 figure in two different places on my machine. The packing list reads 250, though.

Could the other 20GB be in a hidden partition? If so, how would I check on that?

Thanks for your thoughts and advice!

 

250 GB = 232 GiB, which is what your computer reads, correctly.

This question is getting as famous as "can i upgrade my gpu". I'd write a guide about it, but that would be one short guide.

Hard Drive FAQ:

Where my gigabytes at?
The pixie fairies took 'em.

No, really, where my gigabytes at?
You count in decimal. Your computer counts in binary. To you, 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 Bytes. To your computer, 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 Bytes. Thus your computer will always report ~73 MB short for every GB, that's about 7% for those of you with a calculator, so in order to calculate what your computer will read out, multiply the number on the package by 93%.

Thanks bro, here's a cookie.
Thank you very much.

 

I say don't worry about it its 20GB.

 

There isn't anything to worry about anyway.......a 250gb drive formats out to 232gb (as Lithus has pointed out above) so he OP got exactly what he ordered.

 

He already knows that

 

Hard drive manufacturers publish the storage in terms of metric bytes. So 250 is 250,000,000,000 bytes. However, to a computer a GB is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Divide 250,000,000,000 by 1,073,741,824 and you get what you have. Nothing is missing.

 

There are still people who don't know this?

 

Thats what I was thinking

 

Well, that doesn't really answer his question, does it. It'd be a bit like someone on a forum asking why their kettle doesn't quite boil - "don't worry about it" informs them of nothing, other than an opinion of someone else who has made no attempt to quantify his reasoning behind whether it is an actual problem or not..

Lots of people know lots of things. It isn't fair to assume that everyone does, especially seeing as this guy was querying it.

It's already been said(thumbs-up to atbnet), but the whole thing based on two different measurement standards - right ones, and wrong ones. A megabyte should be correctly stated as 1,048,576 bytes, but is often stated as being 1,000,000 bytes, and sometimes 1,024,000 bytes.

A gigabyte is generally 1000 megabytes. This is technically wrong, but advertisers like to play with the figures because Joe Bloggs things he's getting a bit more for his money.

Incorrect:- 1000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000
Incorrect:- 1000 x 1,024,000 = 1,024,000,000
Incorrect:- 1000 x 1,048,576 = 1,048,576,000
Correct:- 1024 x 1,048,576 = 1,073,741,824

So, a 250 gigabyte drive would measure as below:-

250 x 1,000,000,000 = 250,000,000,000
250 x 1,024,000,000 = 256,000,000,000
250 x 1,048,576,000 = 262,144,000,000
250 x 1,073,741,824 = 268,435,456,000

Then, on top of the differing values used by manufacturers, the operating system works backwards, and uses 1,073,741,824 as the magic number, because a gigabyte should be defined as 1024 x 1024 x 1024. This number is absolutely correct, but it's easier for people to imagine a gigabyte as being 1000 megabytes. Given that their understanding of a megabyte is also incorrect, the inaccuracy just keeps on growing.

250 x 1,048,576,000 = 262,144,000,000
262,144,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 244.141 gigabytes

250 x 1,000,000,000 = 250,000,000,000
250,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 232.831 gigabytes

250 x 1,024,000,000 = 256,000,000,000
256,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 238.419 gigabytes

So, that is why your laptop doesn't have as much room as you're expecting. It's because the hard drive manufacturer, and the laptop manufacturer, choose to use one set of numbers so it looks like you're buying more than you really are. The operating system uses the absolute definition, rather than the sales brochure fiddles.

Simple way to calculate the actual usable size is to multiply the advertised size by 0.924, as the difference between the 'definitions' is always 7.4%.

 

Thanks for that clarification......your post saved the day from complete and utter meltdown!

 

Dell even mentions it on their site, I think, that formatted capacity may vary, though they skip the excellent explanation above.

 

Uh, thanks for jumping to an erroneous conclusion; it doesn't say GiB. It says GB. No need to get all sanctimonious. I mean, good explanation, but the cookie thing is out of nowhere.

 

Thanks very much to those who kindly answered my question without being a$$holes about it! To the regular Joe, this is pretty esoteric information.

 

It's by no means esoteric.....any "regular Joe" can find this same information by using Google.

 

Meh, it's esoteric enough. I wouldn't reasonably expect any "regular Joe" to know this. Though the "regular Joe's" that lack a sense of humor may have a harder time understanding it.

 

"Regular Joe" can find out virtually anything on Google, if they have a loose idea of what they want, and enough time to research it properly.