Why is my C drive and D drive capacity WAY below what it should be?

My mom recently bought an Acer 3680 laptop. Windows Vista. It has absolutely nothing loaded onto it except Windows.

It is supposed to have an 80GB hard drive. Now I know the capacity is not really 80 but more like 75 or so due to the 1000 doesn't equal 1024 logic. So I would expect that if I right click on the drives in My Computer that the total capacity for the two drives would equal around 75. This is exactly what my old desktop shows.

It's partitioned into the C drive and D drive but they each have only 33GB capacity.

Does this make any sense?

1. Why do I only see a total of 66GB when I would expect 75GB?
2. Assuming I find where that missing ~9GB is, is there an easy way to partition it so it is a different breakout? e.g. 60GB and 15GB?

Thanks in advance!!

 

The missing space is allocated in a hidden partition called PQSERVICE. This is ACER's recovery partition. You better not touch this partition at least not before you burn a set of recovery CDs.

 

I'm a bit of a newbie so can you clarify "recovery CDs"? I have a Windows Vista CD that came with the computer. In fact, I just used this CD to reinstall Vista. Is this all I would need or do I need something else?

Is this recovery partition typical or just for Acer computers? I really need that missing 9GB.

Thanks!

 

Ok, ACER usually do not ship Vista CDs with their laptops(in my experience you're the first one ). Actually they don't provide ANY CDs. Instead, ACER use a 9-12GB from laptop's hdd to create a recovery partition. From that recovery partition you're supposed to burn recovery cds(if you want) for more safety(or if you need the space).

With this partition, only by pressing a key combo you reset your system to factory default settings(OS & drivers installed)

 

After looking at the disc, I should probably clarify. The disk actually says "Windows Anytime Upgrade" and it looks like it is used to upgrade Vista. But when I put it in, one of the options was to reload Windows, which I did. Thus, now I don't think it's an actual Vista CD.

So assuming I DON'T have what I need as backup CDs, how do I go about making these recovery CDs? I started searching for posts but didn't have much luck.

I back up my system every week or so to an external hard drive so I'm willing to take the risk of getting rid of this partition.

Thanks,

 

There should be a program icon on the desktop or Start menu that creates the discs.

 

You need a eRecovery, which is part from Acer Empowering Technology. You can download eRecovery(and all eSOFTWARE) from here.

About that CD. From that new info you posted I'm pretty sure it uses the recovery partition to reinstall Vista so if you delete the partition the CD will become useless.

 

OK, I'm just going to forget that I even have that CD (actually it's a DVD) and work on making recovery disks. I actually found eRecovery on C:\Acer\Empowering Technology so I'll start playing with that.

Thanks,

 

Ok have fun with it

I'm off to bed (it's almost 5 a.m ) if you have more questions post them here...or even better in the ACER section.

 

I attempted to run the eRecovery that was on my computer (I attempted a couple applications in the eRecovery directory) but I had no luck. Not sure if the Empowering Technology suite got messed up when I used the Vista Upgrade disk. (It no longer shows up as an icon on my desktop.)

So I went to the website and downloaded eRecovery. I ran eRecovery and used the Backup icon to make a backup to my computer. There was an icon that said Burn Disk (which I assumed is what I use to burn recovery disks) but it was greyed out and thus I couldn't burn any recovery disks. I am going to call Acer tomorrow and have them walk me through it. My mom got a 3 year help and warranty option so I figured I would use it.

I will post more questions if I have problems. Likely in a new thread since we have now narrowed down the problem.

Thanks,