IBM T41 - the 40 GB hard disks capacity is in fact 35 GB WHY??

[Klamotek]

May anyone help me to find out why the 40 GB hard disk inside my IBM T41 shows the capacity of 35 GB. I've checked it in the disk properties in MS Windows XP Professional and while setting up the partitions using Partition Magic (DOS version).

 

[uOpt]

40,000,000,000 bytes = 37 MB.

Plus there might be the hidden partition for suspend-to-disk, and/or the Windows recovery partition (don't know whether that shows up as a seperate partition).

 

[chilled]

40 * 0.93 = 37.2GB (a good estimate is found by Capacity*0.93)

Windows, other programs and files are probably taking up the rest.

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: Klamotek
May anyone help me to find out why the 40 GB hard disk inside my IBM T41 shows the capacity of 35 GB. I've checked it in the disk properties in MS Windows XP Professional and while setting up the partitions using Partition Magic (DOS version).

Go into the BIOS settings at boot; on the third or fourth page you'll see options for the hidden system-restore partition. Enable the setting to make the partition visible to the OS, reboot, and you'll see it right in Windows Drive Manager. At this point you can use Partition Magic or another utility to reclaim the space if that's desirable.

 

[ultimatebob]

You also need to uninstall the "Rapid Restore" utility in Windows. That software automatically hides any drive that is labeled "D", so the paritition will be hidden in Explorer even though you'll be able to see the it in Disk Management.

Of course, you could just change the drive letter on the partition, but that causes problems of it's own. If you add something like a USB Thumb Drive or CompactFlash card in the future, IT will get assigned as D and will ALSO be hidden until you change the drive letter. Learned that one from experience, what a pain!