Question about my HP Hard Drive(s)

Ok, I purchased my new dv9000z with a 160GB HD as you can tell from my sig. When I check my total space, it's listed as 142 GB. I expected this. But, I hav an extra 7 GB in a drive D that is listed for HP recovery. That's funny because I thought that what was thaking up the 18 GB of space on the main HD. This especially since There is only 626 MB of free space left on the D drive.

So, my question is, whats taking up th 18 Gigs of space on the C drive? and do I need it? Also, what should I do with the D drive?

 

anyone else with a smaller drive got this issue?

 

I have a nc6400 with a 40G HD. I found that the pre-installed xp professional and some system files occupy 8G of my HD (I still haven't figured it out why). But you could erase the SWsetup file after back up as it takes up about 3-4G space.

 

Well, you have the OS, which could get that bloated. I found that out when I built my first desktop and gave Windows a 20GB partition.

You have the recovery partition you mentioned and also the QuickPlay partition. I'm not sure exactly how much all of this should take.

I got my 9000t and starting installing stuff (and uninstalling bloatware) before I even checked the available space.

I don't think I'd be worried about 20GBs, especially since you got the dual 80GBs.

I use my D drive for all of my media, documents, etc. I am leaving the C drive for the OS for now. Unless you have a lot of media, then you should be good. If you do have a ton of mp3s or videos, that is what external drives are for (I have a 300GB Seagate that works very nicely).

 

Ok, now I'm a bit more confused. Windows is telling me that my C drive has 142 GB and my d drive has 7 Gb. Is the D drive just a partition? And I do not think that the 160GB Hard drive is a dual 80 Gig. When I ordered it from HP, It was not listed as a dual HD like the 200 and the 240.

 

You will have to take into account the fact that Windows reports the HDD space in binary system whereas the HDD manufacturers list it in decimal.

 

The 18 GB of space on the main drive is Vista Ultimate (yes it's much much bigger than XP), Then there is the recovery partition on D and then there is the Junk HP installs in your main partition on top of that. Finally, as Miner pointed out, there is the issue of HDD manufacturers saying 1GB=1000Mb when it's really 1048 to do us out of some space.

To calculate what you should have total:

Divide 160000 by 1048 and you get 152.67 which is about what all your partitions should add up to

My fresh install of OEM Vista Ultimate alone was around the 14Gb mark once I installed all the drivers and updates/ultimate extras etc.

 

Actually, scrap my calculations they are wrong. Easiest calculation is to go to My computer and go to properties on your c and d drive. Add up the bytes of the two drives and they should add up to 160,000,000,000 or very close to.