My M140 100gig hard drive is only like 86.9 gig

Total size. What is up with that? I am no tech savy genious but I think if you order a 100gig harddrive that you should get a 100gig hard drive. If I would have wanted a 80gig one I could have saved 40 bucks.

Is this normal or do I have a problem?

 

The missing space is due to extra partitions and 8mb filler space. Dell has a restore partition on the HDD that takes up between 5-10gb, and there is also a 40mb partition which is use for Utilities diagnostics/Media Direct on some systems. The 8mb filler is standard for XP.

SG

 

Also, human gigabytes are different than computers.

This is the way it works a computer recognizes 1024MB as 1GB. When hard drives are advertised they use 1000MB as 1GB. So if you buy a 100GB hard drive, then you are only getting 97.66GB in the drive.

As SG said they Dell partition also has to be figured in 5-10GB depending on Dell. Then the 40MB partition for diagnostics and 8MB for XP. That is where it all goes.

Hope this helps.

 

Yes there is a hidden partition, just like Sony does. Only HP doesn't put them, great to know though.

 

Thanks guys!

I just wanted to say that I love this place. Instead of calling and punching number 1 then 2 then 4 then 6 then 2 then 5 etc., I can just post a guestion and get a unbiased resonse. Seriously, you guys are a big help.

Thanks,
J

 

Hard drives are rated in their native unformatted state. The drive has to be formatted for use by the operating system. This creates partitions which are sectored and a file allocation table. As files are created and erased the FAT is updated to keep track of where the files are located.

For instance, if you purchased a 120 GB hard drive and put it in your pc, once you formatted it for use it may only say 108 GB is available for use.
The size available can vary somewhat depending on what operating system is used.

 

Why is the Dell parition important? Can't I just reformat the drive and remove the Dell partition?

 

I'm assuming you mean the spare partition. Yes you can remove that. Most users don't need it, and they do remove it.

As for the Media Direct/Utilities partition, that depends on your system. If you have a E1705/1505 or an XPS system, I would strongly suggest leaving this partition. It controls the media direct features, allowing you to watch a DVD without having to fully boot into XP. If you delete it, you have to go thru this whole mess of creating a partition and deleting another partition....I won't get into details, but so far most users have said keeping the 40mb partition is the easiest way to make sure your Media Direct functions will work.

Now, if you don't have one of those 3 systems, then it could be helpful to you, but it might not. The utilities partition has dignostics tests which run when you choose that option in the quick boot menu. It tests sound, display, and i believe memory and hdd, but not 100% sure. Personally, I got rid of it since you can run that test off a disc.

 

I felt it would be good to sum it up:

1. Hard drives GB are billions of bytes. So a 100GB hard drive is 100'000'000'000 bytes, not 107'374'182'400 bytes ( 100 x 1024^3 ), which is equal to 100 computer GB.

Grossly, 100 GB for a hard drive = 93,13 GB.

2. Partitionning consumes some space for file tables, units, etc, depending on the type of partitions.

3. Often times, manufacturers set up hidden partitions for restoring the OS, they take up space which is not easily seen by the user.

I think that's it.