PCG-K215B Hard Drive

[smoking]

I just bought my laptop which has the standard 40 GB HD. When I go into 'my computer' the drives are as follows,
C; 5.7GB used & 12.9 GB unused
D; 13.9 GB unused
So the total is 32.5 GB
What happened to the other 7.5 GB and how do I get it back ?

[hanel]

Hi,
You will never get all the hard disk drive space that is stated. When you format a hard drive you create a File Allocation Table which is basically an index of all your files. This information take up a certain percentage of you hard drive. It's something that you've just go to accept.
Cheers
G Hanel

[grahambird80]

Yep as stated above you wont get that space back. this happens on all computers, as such there is no way to get round this.

[smoking]

Thanks for the reply Hanel , however , the volumes I stated were from brand new , straight out of the box . I can accept that the 5.7 GB used on the C drive would account for the OS , XP Home etc., but if you include my 'missing' 7.5 GB this would mean that over 13 GB of drive space has already been taken up out of a total of 40 GB !

[vaiodon]

Start up the disk management MMC plugin and check what capacity is stated for the partitions

[Start]/[Run]/diskmgmt.msc

That is: hit the Start menu, select run and type in diskmgnt.msc

Diskmgmt will show if there's any unformatted space on the disk.

Also check the actual capacity of the disk, like above run the device management plugin

[Start]/[Run]/devmgmt.msc

Drill down to the disk device - right click and select the [Properties] tab and Populate it. The info presented will confirm the actual capacity of the drive.

You can expect a percentage of the raw disk capacity to be lost with formatting but not the amount you quote. In my case I've got a disk that has a capacity of 38147MBytes, formatted into 23141 & 15006MByte partitions giving two NTFS filesystems of 22600 & 14650MBytes resp. The NTFS formatting is taking up apprx 3% of the partition capacity

With GByte capacity disks there can be a sigificant discrepancy between "base10" gigabytes (how disks are sold, 1K = 1000) and the "base2" formed operating system figure (where 1K = 1024)

[smoking]

Hello Vaiodon
Thanks for getting involved !

I followed you instructions , I ran diskmgmt this is what I got ,
recovery part; 4.66GB capacity -1000mb free space -20% free.
Vaio C; 18.63GB capacity - 12.79GB free space - 68% free
Vaio D; 13.96GB capacity - 13.96GB free space - 99% free

When I ran devmgmt I got the following,
recovery; 4769mb - C; 19077mb - D; 14300mb.

It looks like the numbers on C do'nt add up right , if I'm correct can you let me know where I go from here ?

Logging off for the night

[kee-lo_]

32.5 sounds about right for a 40GB drive.

As 1GB = 1024MB

[smoking]

Hello Kee-Lo

Sorry to keep on about it but I still do'nt get it ....the capacity in C & D is about 32.5 alright but between the two the actual free space according to dskmgmt only accounts for about 26.8 GB.

Is my OS on C and accounting for 6 GB of space or is it in the seperate recovery partition of 4.6 GB ?

Thanks

[felixs]

hi smoking
it appears to me, that the missing capacity is the recovery partition. Waht is it for? I got a recovery DVD with my notebook and there is no recovery partition an my harddrive.
If i open the workplace and rightclick my drives i get the following in the properties:
C: 30 Giga (27.9 GB)
😧 50 Giga (46.5 GB)
Of course, they sell it as an 80 giga drive.
regards, Felix

[kee-lo_]

Some VAIOs do have recovery partitions.