I got a 80gb HD but Windows says I got 73Gb

I also downloaded Partition Magic and it says i got 74881 Megabytes. I deleted the media direct partition before re-installing Windows, so now it's only one big partition but I thought it should be more than 73 GB ?? Am I wrong?

Also, I have installed some apps like MS Office, NFS MW, (Those both are the biggest apps i've installed so far) and Windows says I got 15GB used, but when I select all the folders inside C: and click on properties it only displays 6.79GB (Which makes more sense to me, according to applications I've installed)

Any ideas?

 

Well windows takes about 10% of your drive or something like that (for instance on my 40gb drives I get 37.3 when only xp is installed at first) so that may be a big part of it.

Also try cleaning up a bit with something like CC cleaner or the cleaner within windows

 

Unless you merged the partitions together, or deleted the c: partition along with the media partition and made a single partition, you have your 73 GB partition and an unformatted ex-media partition.

 

I merged both partitions... well so Windows takes 10% off of my HD.. but why is used 15GB if I've installed just a few apps

 

no, that sounds about right for actual space. Actual space is always less then advertised values because the advertised values are stated in base 10 (decimal) values, where the real values are in base 2 (binary)

as for there seeming to be too much space used, perhaps you have a lot of restore points and other temp files lying around.

 

hard-drive manufacturers use different measurement. Our computer recognizes 1MB = 1024KB. However, Hard-drive M. are measuring 1MB = 1000KB. So when you do the math, 80,000,000,000/ (1024)^3 =74.505. so I guess you are about a right space.

 

ok but what about the too much space used? It's under the HG graphic but not under properties when I select all folders in C:

 

how do I delete restore points

 

start>all programs>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup

once the window is up, click on the more options tab at the top. The last option on that page is to remove all but most recent restore points. This can free up a ton of space, esp when you have been installing many programs and windows keeps making restore points.

 

Doing some quick math.....

The advertised amount is 80 Gb, which is 80,000,000 Kb in advertising terms. However, if you were to have 80 Gb in terms of a computer, that amount should be 83,886,080 Kb, because there are 1,024 Kb in one Mb, and 1,024 Mb in one Gb. So assuming that you are given a hard drive with exactly 80,000,000 Kb (Which isn't likely), you would end up with approximately 76.29 Gb, which is not extremely different than what you got.

 

My 100gb drive only really has 87gb! Now talking about getting less for your money! Does this compute too?

 

No, my 100gig drive is 95 gig so i assume some of your drive is hidden in a hpa partition or unallocated space.

 

basically from my experience, you can count on having ~5 gigs less then advertised for every 60 gigs. That is a 60 gig drive will have about 55, a 120 gig drive will have about 110. And this is pretty accurate as i have two 60's and one 120 which follow this "rule".

 

Doughy, my 100gb is at 7200 rpm. What is yours. Maybe that is the difference? Did you wipe and reformat thus removing the 5gb restore?

 

yes i got a 5400 drive and i wiped all partitions

 

Thanks -- that is the reason. How was the wipe job?

 

Easy, runs like a charm, had a trouble getting media direct working but it never worked when i got the laptop new from dell. I downloaded the media directcd from a link i found and it worked first time.

cheers

 

Do you remember the link. My IT tech is going to wipe me tomorrow.

 

get it here

 

Don't have it. Be sure it is Gosman