DELL lappie shows smaller hardrive than specs ??

Hmm_Messiah

hey have a dell m1210 - its meant to be 80 gb but if you look thro properties it only shows just under 70


Is this because of that media direct software and the space it takes? seems alo of space to lose

if it is it it useful or should i just reformat?

its there a way i can confirm the actual size of the harddrive ?

many thanks

AlmightyCushion

The media direct on my dell laptop only took up about two gigs. The rest is lost due to the way hard drive manufacturers advertise the storage space. They say a GB = 1000MB while windows reports it as 1024MB. This is the same for MB and KB. So in actual fact you only have 73GB hard drive (or something close to that) instead on an 80GB hard drive. You can get rid of the media direct partition as well. I never used the thing and got rid of it.

mathias

So in actual fact you only have 73GB hard drive (or something close to that) instead on an 80GB hard drive.

The above is not quite correct , it might lead someone to believe that they were cheated !

In the first case , there may be a hidden partition with a recovery image on it , this should take up no more than 3GB.

The rest is down to different counting systems , the correct count for a hard drive is 1 000 000 000 bytes = 1GB , but windows does not count like this and incorrectly calls , 1 073 741 824 bytes = 1 GB ( note that this is now and always will be incorrect ! ).

That amount should be called a Gib ( giga binary ) but windows will insist on using GB) .

Here are the details from NIST ( National institute of Standards and Testing). If Windows could get around to using the correct unit Gib instead of GB , it would stop all this confusion , which crops up quite a lot.

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html

Rest assured that you are not " missing" any space. Its just being reported incorrectly by Windows.

In short 80 GB is approx = to 73 Gib , nothings missing!

AlmightyCushion

mathias wrote:

The above is not quite correct , it might lead someone to believe that they were cheated !

Sorry it's just been a long weekend and I was trying to come up with a quick response. One thing though I always thought that it was the hard drive manufacturers that were using the incorrect system.

mathias

One thing though I always thought that it was the hard drive manufacturers that were using the incorrect system.

Nope ! SI prefixes have always been decimal and hard drives are not built on binary trees , Giga means 1 x10^9 and always has done.
SI prefixes are not meant to be used for binary counting systems. Binary has had its own prefixes since 1997 and these are what should be used by Windows , not the SI prefixes.

Before the Binary prefixes were officially agreed upon it was permissable to use SI prefixes but only if it was specifically stated that a different value was being used. Hard Drive Manufacturers have always used the correct SI units.

daedalus2097

Ah, so memory manufacturers are getting it wrong then? I'm not saying the SI system isn't the right way to do it, but the convention in computers (and I appreciate you saying Windows there when you probably mean the entire computing world) is to use the powers of two. Memory, files, transfers, buffers, any OS I've seen (and I've seen a lot), all aspects of computer architecture use powers of two and call it kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. Magnetic storage and DVD drives seem to be the only area where the "correct" SI system is used, all other storage uses powers of 2. Rather than trying to change how the entire computing world works, maybe a simple explanation of the differences in convention is more appropriate.

It's convenient for drive manufacturers to go against this convention as it makes their drives looks bigger... And while the IEC has recommended this unit be called Gib (Gibibyte, bit handier than giga binary byte), it has not ruled out its use or ever called it incorrect.

daedalus2097

P.S., all Dell machines supplied with Vista that I've seen have a recovery partition of a number of GB which will take from your overall capacity... On the machines I've seen it's not even hidden...

subway

m1210 come with a recover partition which is 1.5gB iiirc, thats fopr xp.
multiply by any random large number for vista...

you can use something like partition magic to do away with it,
restoring a dell machine to factory defaults usually leaves you with 3 hours of uninstalling to do afterwards, just make sure you have an xp/vista disc in your pack.
thye usuually provide them on the hi-end stuff

Hmm_Messiah

thanks for the answers


I think I'll just leave as is, its really just a portable backup to the desktop

and I actually kinda like that media direct thing

offhand would any one know is the media direct any benefit re power consumption
eg for dvds/music would battery last longer - I know still using optical drive etc but som benefit from runing less processes than run in XP ?

AlmightyCushion

Hmm_Messiah wrote:

thanks for the answers


I think I'll just leave as is, its really just a portable backup to the desktop

and I actually kinda like that media direct thing

offhand would any one know is the media direct any benefit re power consumption
eg for dvds/music would battery last longer - I know still using optical drive etc but som benefit from runing less processes than run in XP ?

I'd say it could but I'd say it would be pretty small.