Why does my system say I have a 143 GB HD, when it is supposed to be 160?

I go to Sys Info and it says my C drive is 143 GB with 120 free. What's up with that? Any possibility I got the wrong drive? Or does this have something to do with the partitions?

If I plug in my Service tag number at the Dell Support website, it says 160 GB HD.

Sorry if this has been asked before. I haven't seen it posted since I have been here...

 

You're forgetting the partition that Mediadirect sits on.

 

I'm not an expert so someone else can probably give you a better answer...

But I'd say you have the correct drive.

When manufacturers state 160GB they are saying that a 1 megabyte = 1000 kilobytes whereas the computer says that 1 megabyte = 1024 kb (this is the correct value)

So a manufacturer will always show that their drives are bigger than they actually are due to the rounding down of the definition of a megabyte.

Hope that's right.

Just rest peacefully knowing that you got the drive that you paid for

Paul

 

No, it is the correct drive. You (and everyone else) are just a victim of manufacturers mislabeling.

160GB is 160,000,000,000 bytes...which a computer interprets as about 149GB, and about 6GB is used in the recovery partition.

Manufacturers measure 1GB = 1000*1000*1000 bytes, whereas computers measure with 1GB = 1024*1024*1024 bytes.

 

Recovery partition.
Also several GB's are taken up when formatting to write the file allocation table, and so on. You will never get the full amount from any HDD. The larger the HDD, the more you will lose when its formatted.

 

Thanks, everyone!

It's good to know I don't have to send the thing back. I lucked out and got a nice machine. The Samsung screen is even pretty nice.

So it does have to do with partitions. And the funky way numbers are rounded. Strange.

Now I wonder how CD-Rs discs and stuff like that are rated? Like a 700 MB CD disc. Do they fall into the 1,000 or 1,024 category?? LOL

 

What Greg said.

Also, see this guide for more info about what is using your HD space in Vista.

 

It's a shock when you see it but relax that you have exactly the same amount of storage - if the disk used pigeon-holes which a byte was put in like a letter you would still have the same number of pigeon-holes to put bytes in. It's just a difference in representing the total amount.