HP Pavillion DV7T Quad query

Received my HP Pavillion DV7T Quad laptop yesterday. Don't like the new mouse pad and the keyboard, but i can manage with it. The one thing that bothers me greatly is that i had ordered a customized laptop with 160 GB solid state drive and an additional 500 GB @ 7200 rpm hard drive.

The three hard disk drives on the laptop i have received are the following:

1. OS(C drive) 74.4 GB free of 117 GB

2. Data (D drive) 465 GB free of 465 GB

3. Recovery (E drive) 4.65 GB free of 31.6 GB

The 500 GB 7200 rpm hard disk drive has obviously been partitioned into D: and E: But why is the C: hard disk drive showing 117 GB instead of a number closer to 160 GB? I called HP and the representative said that this was unusual, but unfortunately i did not have internet access on my laptop and he could not view my laptop from remote access. Then, later, i called again, and reached a second representative who accessed my laptop using remote access and then said that a portion of the 160 GB SSD is being used for Bios and also for virtual memory. This did not make sense to me. I just spoke to a techie friend of mine and he says it does not make sense to him as well. My friend also wondered why the Windows 7 operating system which came pre-loaded on the laptop (along with some additional drivers) is occupying so much memory. Any comments/thoughts on my issue? Should i contact HP representatives again? Does it make sense that approximately 43 GB of the SSD is being allocated for virtual memory and the Bios?

 

I found this same problem on a Dell computer that I was fixing up for one of my friends. They create a volume for their restore software and all their other crapware. The only way I could get the HD's back to their original state was by plugging them in to an older computer using a usb connecter kit and deleting all the volumes. That sucks they used your SSD to store thier files, I would start from scratch like i suggested if I was you. And no it does not make sense that your HD would be occupied by the Bios and virtual memory. Bios shouldn't take up any HD space at all and you should be able to switch over your virtual memory to your mechanical HD

 

Brju,

I suspect the recovery partition is on your SSD. Just create the recovery discs then afterwards delete it.

 

Your recovery drive (E: drive) is on your SSD (which is C: drive + E: drive). D: is your 500 GB hard drive; it shows up as 465 GB due to minor differences in definition; Windows and other OS's define a GB as 2^30 (1,073,741,824) bytes, while marketing defines a GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes. So, a 500 GB drive is 500,000,000,000 bytes, but in terms of computer GB it's only 465 GB. The same applies to your SSD; 160 "GB" is 149 GB, and thus C: + E: (117 + 31.6). Oh, and a little overhead goes into the file system as well, which reduces your hard drive space even more.

If it helps, this page on Wikipedia explains this a bit in the portion titled "Consumer confusion".

 

thanks to everyone for the informative responses.