Hard Drive Disk Capacity?

Hey all, I just wanted to know if this is a similar situation for anyone else here. My laptop is supposed to have a 250 gb hard drive (according to the Futureshop website, anyway).The computer itself says that it has 220 gb, 178 gb which are currently free (on the C: drive, while the D: drive has about 6 gb total). Now I dont have many files that I've added on the laptop seeing as how I just got it. I know Vista and the other preinstalled stuff take up room, but not THAT much. I checked the properties of the C: drive and it said about 42 gb are being used, but when I open it, select all the stuff in there and check the properties that way, it only amounts to 15 gb. Am I missing something here? Are there a bunch of hidden files somewhere? Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

 

This guide is for Dells but it should relate to just about any Vista machine. Pay close attention to the System Restore section

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=157838

 

Also HDD capacities are rounded up. My "120GB" only really have about 111GB with the recovery and everything.
You don't need to worry about it.

 

The reason for this is because HDD manufacturers use a different number to represent Gigabyte than the number used on other components and within the OS. HDD manufacturers call 1000MB their Gigabyte and other hardware components and the OS call a Gigabyte 1024MB. HDD manufactures use 1000 to make their hard drives appear to have larger capacities. It's nothing to worry about.

-J.B.

 

thanks for the info everyone. My only question is, even with the rounding up and the differences in what a gb is to manufacturers, is it normal for the hard drive capacity to be that much different? (ie its supposed to have 250 when he computer indicates a total of about 226 gb)?

 

Yes it is normal I have a A215-S7462 it came with a 250 gig hard drive. I use Win xp home and the operating system shows it as 232gig hard drive