New Dell 40gb HDD only shows up as 33.6GB

[RbSX]

Hey guys..


I just bought a dell inspiron 8600... and it only shows up at being 33.6 GB could this be a format issue for the hard drive?

Ryan

 

[mechBgon]

Go to Control Panel > Performance & Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Then go down the Computer Management tree to Disk Management and see if some of the drive's capacity is being used by a System Restore partition.

Also, a "40GB" drive is going to come out less using the method of capacity measurement that Windows uses, so it wouldn't come out to 40GB in Windows' way of thinking even if it were all one partition.

 

[Abhi]

There is most probably a restore partition or a diagnostic partition on your hdd taking up space...

 

[TheStu]

that looks to be about 5 gigs off of what it should be... sounds like a recovery partition... strange, when did Dell start putting those in?

 

[Genx87]

I believe they also put in diag software.

 

[RbSX]

OK.

There is a 3.49 GB partition that is unknown and doesn't show up in My Computer. I'm fairly good with managing my backups and all of that.. so how can I reincoporate it into my C:\ without reformatting the entire computer?

 

[networkman]

You could use a program like Partition Magic Pro from Symantec to delete the unknown partition and then add the space to the existing partition for C:

 

[JeffBlair]

Dell has started to put on a recovery partition, and not send out the software on CD's. This is a new thing that they are doing on the Dimension and Inspiron's. You can still get CD's, but you have to make sure you select it when you get the system.

 

[SLCentral]

If you do delete the partition, keep in mind you'll have to order restore CD's from Dell or buy your own copy of Windows XP, as you won't have any way to restore the system. Do you really need that 3.5GB?

 

[RbSX]

Originally posted by: SLCentral
If you do delete the partition, keep in mind you'll have to order restore CD's from Dell or buy your own copy of Windows XP, as you won't have any way to restore the system. Do you really need that 3.5GB?

The CDs came with the computer as well.. which is kind of weird.