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.

    T60 - shrinking Hard Drive?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by tepidarium, Jul 31, 2007.

  1. tepidarium

    tepidarium Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Here' something I don't understand. My T60 has a 120GB hard Drive. It reads the C: drive as being only 112 GB in size. The recovery partition seems to take up about 5gb so I wondered what happened to the other 3GB...

    Then - I needed to do a full recovery and restore back to factory settings...now the C; drive reads maximum capacity as 107 GB! Where is my HD space going?!

    What can I do...

    Thanks for any help!
     
    tepidarium, Jul 31, 2007
    #1
  2. acaurora

    acaurora Notebook Deity NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    259
    Messages:
    1,213
    Likes Received:
    6
    Trophy Points:
    56
    When you read the capacity as advertised that is the unformatted capacity. Due to the structure of file systems (FAT, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, etc.) some of that capacity gets lost due to the file system's structures. At least that is what i"m told. At least you lost only 3 GB. I have one of Seagate's big 750 GB HDDs that has a realistic capacity of only 700 GB. 50 GB is quite a lot =[..

    As for the shrinkage in capacity - perhaps your initial 112 GB is with some of the default programs removed? And restoring it brought them all back?
     
    acaurora, Jul 31, 2007
    #2
  3. baddogboxer

    baddogboxer Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    144
    Messages:
    1,092
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    A 120GB HDD (when they sell it to you) is read by your computer as about 112GB.
    My 160GB is really 149GB

    Here is a link to explain, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

    The shrink is not because of file structure. It is because of decimal vs binary numbering. 1000 vs 1024.
     
    baddogboxer, Jul 31, 2007
    #3
  4. Playmaker

    Playmaker Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    266
    Messages:
    1,534
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    When formatted under Windows, a hard drive has about 93% of its retail-listed capacity.
     
    Playmaker, Jul 31, 2007
    #4
  5. Stunner

    Stunner Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    154
    Messages:
    1,141
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    My 320GB external HD really only has 300GB of space :(
     
    Stunner, Aug 1, 2007
    #5
  6. tepidarium

    tepidarium Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Ok, I understand that the hard drive doesn't have it's full advertised capactiy - BUT why did the gull capacity of mine change?

    It went from 112 GB to 107 GB - even if I uninstall programs, the full capactiy is still now only 107 GB --- anyone know fi I an get back my extra 5 GB to bring it back to 112 GB?

    THanks
     
    tepidarium, Aug 1, 2007
    #6
  7. mujtaba

    mujtaba ZzzZzz Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    4,242
    Messages:
    3,088
    Likes Received:
    510
    Trophy Points:
    181
    Try the HDTune program, it will give you some information about your hard-drive.
     
    mujtaba, Aug 1, 2007
    #7
  8. Playmaker

    Playmaker Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    266
    Messages:
    1,534
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    93% of 120GB is 112GB, which is the full amount of usable space on your HD. Take another 5GB for the recovery partition, you have 107GB left. When you talked about 112GB, that never included the recovery partition. There's no other explanation for it than you simply being mistaken in your first post.

    In short, there's nothing wrong with your hard drive. Keep your head up.
     
    Playmaker, Aug 1, 2007
    #8
  9. mtor

    mtor Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    41
    Messages:
    1,031
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0


    Thanks for the info. I was also wondering the same thing
     
    mtor, Aug 1, 2007
    #9
  10. R4000

    R4000 Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    736
    Messages:
    2,762
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Another reason could be Shadow Copy, if system restore is enabled on Vista Business or Ultimate.
     
    R4000, Aug 1, 2007
    #10
  11. Playmaker

    Playmaker Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    266
    Messages:
    1,534
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    No, his hard drive is perfectly normal. My new T61 had a 120GB drive. On factory format, it was only 107GB because 5GB was allocated to the recovery partition. Otherwise, usable space was 112GB. The numbers match, there's nothing wrong with the OP's hard drive and he's just tripping over air.
     
    Playmaker, Aug 1, 2007
    #11
  12. tepidarium

    tepidarium Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Ok, everyone was right. I thought perhaps my recovery operation had installed a second hidden partition of 5 GB but this was not the case.

    Thank you for answering my questions.
     
    tepidarium, Aug 1, 2007
    #12