The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    What happened to my 24 gb?!

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by shinakuma9, Sep 26, 2008.

  1. shinakuma9

    shinakuma9 Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    172
    Messages:
    1,512
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    So this is what i dont understand.
    My hard drive is supposed to have 320 gb, but after some cleaning up in disk management and changing all the unallocated space to one partition (C:\), it shows that my total space is 296 gb.
    Wheres the other 24? lol
     
  2. Gloomster

    Gloomster Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    11
    Messages:
    157
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Well, a 320gb in a reality is more like a 297gb hard drive because of the ways they report sizes. That only leaves a gig that yours doesn't show which might be hidden or something.
     
  3. Michel.K

    Michel.K 167WAISIQ

    Reputations:
    353
    Messages:
    1,216
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Have you ever seen a harddrive that is what it says it is? Like any other 160GB is 160? or 80GB that is 80GB and so on? :D hehe

    Windows doesn't show the volume in the same way as the manufacturer. And yeah ~298.09GB is what a 320GB drive should end up like :)
     
  4. Andy

    Andy Notebook Prophet

    Reputations:
    2,133
    Messages:
    6,399
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    206
    It's down to hard drive manufacturers lying about disk sizes - they class 1GB as 1 billion bytes as opposed to 1024*1024*1024 bytes (1,073,741,824)

    Gigabyte (GB) = 1,024 Megabytes or 1,073,741,824 Bytes

    320,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 298.02

    The rest --> Recovery Partition ?

    Check Disk Management.
     
  5. Jstn7477

    Jstn7477 Sam I Am

    Reputations:
    213
    Messages:
    780
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Windows shows disk sizes in Gigabytes (GB). Hard Disk manufacturers use Gigabits (Gb). A Gigabyte is 1024 Megabytes and a Gigabit is 1000 megabytes (or megabits I forgot which).

    -J.B.
     
  6. Andy

    Andy Notebook Prophet

    Reputations:
    2,133
    Messages:
    6,399
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    206
  7. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

    Reputations:
    4,412
    Messages:
    8,077
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    205
    the drive will format to 298Gb or so, because of a very basic understanding of computer terms
    there are 1024 bits in a byte, so the drive may say 320,020,950,500 bytes, but when formatted the drive become ~298Gb.
    The drive is really 320Gigabytes, but through the conversions, you can make use of 298Gb.

    K-TRON