Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Dodgy Al]

I have just replaced the hard drive in my lappy, which was fun. But there seems to be a lot of memory missing. It should be 80gb, but it's saying the total size is 63.8gb. I have the exact same model hard drive which I am using as an external unit, and the total size of that reads as 74.5gb. (not quite 80gb, but that's for another thread maybe!)

So with two identical hard drives, one seems to be almost 11gb smaller. why?

[Demophobe]

Well, there's the math thing...that GBs aren't as they seem, yada, yada, insert Gord/Bulsajo here. Then there's the NTFS thing...Windows holding onto a certain amount of space for reasons that are all fine in WinWorld.

Bottom line, no biggie.

[Bulsajo]

Not me, I'm terrible at math and never did quite understand the whole alternative methods of calculating bytes.
As a terrible math person, a 17GB difference on an 80 GB drive (and 11 BG difference on the same model) seems a bit much...

I would check disk manager and see if there isn't some unpartitioned/unformatted space on there somewhere...

but then maybe this particular company is telling more capacity whoppers than your average HD manufacturer?

[SuperHero]

74.5 gb is correct. I have two 80's that show 74.5 and they are different brands. Both of my 250gb drives show 233gb and they are also different brands. I'm pretty sure you've got a problem.

If disk manager doesn't work or can't help you then I would recommend getting a copy of Partition Magic and seeing if you can find your missing GBs

[Dodgy Al]

Okay. I went into disk manager, and discovered the location of the lost gigabytes. There are indeed two partitions, and my allusive bytes are in something called a FAT32 file system - the status section says 'Healthy EISA configuration'. Also, both partitions have a blue bar indicating that they are both primary partitions.

Needless to say, i don't know what any of this means!

So, is it safe to delete this partition? And how would i do that? I looked for the option on the Computer Management screen but couldn't find it. Given the info above, do you think it's a job for Partition Magic?

Thanks for your help guys. Superhero, that's a sheitload of GBs you got there!!!

[Bulsajo]

Who set up your pc for you?

Sounds like someone configured it (or started to configure it) to be dual-booting with alternate O/S probably Win98 or ME.

I personally would use Partition Magic, but that's because I'm a nervous nellie when it comes to HDs (and potential data loss). I think you could just reformat that partition to NTFS if you're sure there's nothing valuable on it. After that I don't know if you would need to delete the partition or not, it might just automatically get assigned a drive letter (I can't remember and am too lazy to look it up right now, a site like pcnineoneone.com or Tom's Hardware would be able to tell you).

[jazblanc77]

Both times I've bought a computer in Korea and the people at the shop setup the OS for me, they have done wacky things with partitions. Also, went in for maintenance once and they offered to do a reinstall for free, i thought, 'why not, it saves me the time!'. Big mistake. Korean computer shops are big into partitions but, in my experience, don't really know what they are doing with them. Bottom line, always do your own installs if you want to make sure your partitions are running correctly.

Everyone previous has given good advice. Just follow it and you should be okay.

[Dodgy Al]

I upgraded the hard drive myself using Acronis' disk imaging software. I never asked it to do some weird dual-booting thing, but i have read some bad things about this software. It looks like a combination of me doing something very badly, and using software I don't understand! Or perhaps something went wrong during the imaging process. I did skilfully back everything up first though. Clever me eh!

So I downloaded the demo version of partition magic, and solved the problem. I managed to convert the FAT32 to NTFS and work out how to relabel all my memory as c. drive. And so, everything was great. At least, I thought it was, until I tried to apply the changes. It then told me that this demo version is for 'evaluation purposes only' and that actual changes are impossible. hrmph! I guess they have to make money somehow.

So...the saga continues.... my question to the gurus of this forum... is there any way of doing this without forking out $50 on partition magic?!

[Bulsajo]

Just use the Windows disk manager I think. As I posted earlier you can find "How TOs" all over the internet. Start at Tom's Hardware.