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    Question relating to HDD's and OS's

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by sonicz5039, Jan 16, 2010.

  1. sonicz5039

    sonicz5039 Newbie

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    Since I have had my laptop with a 320 GB HDD inside it, its never actually been seen as full 320. I understand some may be in a logical partition, part in recovery, other in the OS and use-able section. In vista it made sense why it was seen as 285, yet in windows 7 after upgrading, though I probably told it to do an upgrade rather then a wipe with the custom install option, its still seen the C directory as 285. The partition for Recovery is 10 GB, 32 bit windows 7 takes 16 gb and 64 bit taking 20 GB. So thats only about 26-30 gb used for partitions or the OS.(The other 2 partitions I saw were only MB not GB, like 5 mb and 256 mb for the other partitions I saw during windows 7's install.)

    Is there something I forgot about HDD's at the moment/blanked out on why it isn't giving me all space possible? Or is it from the method I did the windows 7 install requiring a full wipe to gain any space back.
     
    sonicz5039, Jan 16, 2010
    #1
  2. weinter

    weinter /dev/null

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    Harddisk Manufacture says 1MB is 1000KB
    In software binary speak 1MB is 1024KB.
    After some dividing you will find in software speak 320GB of physical harddrive has less than 320GB of space you do the math.
    1GB=1024*1024*1024 (says computer)
    1GB=1000*1000*1000 (says disk manufacturer)
     
    weinter, Jan 16, 2010
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  3. Judicator

    Judicator Judged and found wanting.

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    Also don't forget that 320 GB isn't actually 320 GB... Usually a 320 GB drive is 320,000,000,000 bytes, but when you actually use binary, a GB is 1,073,741,824 bytes, so what you end up with is actually less than a full 320 GB.

    Edit - weinter got there before I did.
     
    Judicator, Jan 16, 2010
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  4. sonicz5039

    sonicz5039 Newbie

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    Well that answers my question, learned I don't have to do another clean install of windows 7 then. As the math basically shows in binary its actually only around 300 GB, seeing as theres a 10 GB recovery partition I keep with factory image, and 16 for 32 bit windows 7, leads to the same amount of HDD space remaining. Question I'm wondering now is if vista home premium was said to take 40 GB I must have found wrong info as I had 285 (-20 gb for the fluff and crap dell installs) unless alot of the 20 was vista's unable to be shut down services or programs.
     
    sonicz5039, Jan 16, 2010
    #4