[midwest]

Sooooooooooooooooooooooo.. I pick up a new Dell laptop.. Insperion 1705 I think it is... nice widescreen, almost got all the free crap out of it too...

Anyway, I buy it with a 60GB hard drive and after doing some maintenance I decided to see whats left.

To my HORROR, it started with a total of 49.7GB and has 43.7 now available!

WTF? I know you can expect some losses in the total capacity... but 17%? And I am working on clearing the damn near 7GB of useless crap in there.

My question is this... should I be pissed I bought a 60GB harddrive and essentially got a 50GB one? To me... that seems like just a little too much losss.

 

[ragdoll]

Usually there is always a fine print with harddrive storage sizes. E.g. A 20GB drive will read like 18.6GB in Windows. So add that loss and add all of the files to run the OS, the programs that are loaded, and your personal info, 42.7GB seems ok.

 

[RSixxy]

you have more than enough space for what you need to do unless you are going to be doing lots of gaming. Clean out some of the stuff you know you will not use and you will be fine anyway. When I got my Dell Laptop, I deleted some things like AOL and stuff I didn't want or would never use.

 

[Pegjumpflyer]

Dell puts an ungodly amount of useless crap on their hard drives. 5-10% of wasted space.
I had to reformat my new dell drives to get that stuff off. ads/pop ups all kinds of stuff.

 

[SportyChick]

I would bitch! Call Dell tech support right now and whine to them and see what quality support you get!

 

[RSixxy]

I would bitch! Call Dell tech support right now and whine to them and see what quality support you get!

lol that's IF customer support can understand you and you understand them:death:

 

[Bigdaa]

lol that's IF customer support can understand you and you understand them:death:

I agree. You might get Ravi in Pancott on the phone, and if history serves us well, we can remember that they betrayed Shiva, so any support you get would be suspect at best!

 

[midwest]

Usually there is always a fine print with harddrive storage sizes. E.g. A 20GB drive will read like 18.6GB in Windows. So add that loss and add all of the files to run the OS, the programs that are loaded, and your personal info, 42.7GB seems ok.

Clean out some of the stuff you know you will not use and you will be fine anyway.

I think you guys arent listening.. .ITS BRAND NEW... I havent put anything on there and the CAPACITY is 49.7 minus all the DELL crap I am working to get off... leaves me with 43.7!

My concern was a 60GB hard drive with a delivered capacity of only 49.7GB?



OH... and I will easily use up the space with movies and such... say I load up 3 movies for the kids on a trip... I will be getting close to filling her up in no time.

Is that normal? Respectable? Seems like a ton to me. On my desktop I recall only a small residual loss initially of hard drive space.. on an 80gb drive maybe 4GB total gone.

Am I missing something?

 

[ragdoll]

Am I missing something?

Maybe.

You are looking at the C: drive as how much space you have. Dell ALWAYS ALWAYS makes atleast one more partition as a Utility Partition. They there also maybe be another partition for other stuff too. You can't see the Util. Partition from Windows, so it appears to just be less space. Also, having 7GB used up right away on a Dell is pretty normal. The cram a lot of useless crap on there. Stuff you don't even see. Like Dell Disk Management and Dell Drivers. That crap adds up.

I'm on a notebook right now with a 30Gb drive and windows shows that it's a 27.9GB drive, to put it in perspective. Mine is a Dell also.

I work with Dell machines 90% of my job. I set them up on financial companies networks and workstations. (just so you don't think I'm just making stuff up)

 

[RSixxy]

I KNOW it's brand new...but it does come loaded with some software obviously that you may want to use or your ordered..if you want the whole 60 then reformat the hard drive..geeze.

Better yet get the kids portable DVD players

 

[midwest]

I'm on a notebook right now with a 30Gb drive and windows shows that it's a 27.9GB drive, to put it in perspective. Mine is a Dell also.

If that is the case I should be closer to 55-56GB than 49! Right?

Remember too, this is after I did a quick and easy sweep of the thing and already deleted a bunch of useless AOL/Dell/Norton crap off.

Dell ALWAYS ALWAYS makes atleast one more partition as a Utility Partition. They there also maybe be another partition for other stuff too. You can't see the Util. Partition from Windows, so it appears to just be less space

OOOOHHHHH REALLY?! This makes sense to me. IF I reformat and start over will I get those back? If I cant see th eUtility Partition.. then I am almost afraid to ask what the hell is taking up the 7GB of space that I can see?

I think I am gonna gut it... start over with the essentials only and move on from there... We'll see what I get back after that.



OH and try to find a phone number to Dell Customer Service... all this online chat crap they make you do now...

 

[ragdoll]

OOOOHHHHH REALLY?! This makes sense to me. IF I reformat and start over will I get those back? If I cant see th eUtility Partition.. then I am almost afraid to ask what the hell is taking up the 7GB of space that I can see?

I think I am gonna gut it... start over with the essentials only and move on from there... We'll see what I get back after that.



OH and try to find a phone number to Dell Customer Service... all this online chat crap they make you do now...

A 60GB would read about 55-56GB in windows, Now take away for a Util partition and the possibility of another back up partition(depending on how they set it up) and you're down to your 50Gb you're seeing in Windows.

Partitions are uh, partitions... so if you format you drive, it won't effect the other partitions which, in the case of dell, are pretty much hidden from normal users. So you won't ever see them. Util partitions are usually pretty small in comparision, so I'm thinking you have another partition on there somewhere. You can't get rid of them... either the system won't run or your warranty will vanish.

Dell support: 877-671-3355

 

[midwest]

The guy I use for stuff like this has a little disk he tosses in and in 5 seconds... BAMM! Hard drive is cleared. Not sure if it takes partitions down too.. but I am imagining it does.

Soooo I am not really reformatting per se....

 

[ragdoll]

The guy I use for stuff like this has a little disk he tosses in and in 5 seconds... BAMM! Hard drive is cleared. Not sure if it takes partitions down too.. but I am imagining it does.

Soooo I am not really reformatting per se....

Not sure what that disk is, but there is a lot more to removing a partition than just running a file... ok, not a lot, but it's not that easy.

 

[RC90]

maybe find the HDD software from the manufacturer and do a low level format... would that get rid of all the partitions on the drive?

 

[Bigdaa]

maybe find the HDD software from the manufacturer and do a low level format... would that get rid of all the partitions on the drive?

You gotta remove all info in order to remove a partition. But really, there is no reason to remove a partion. Use it as you would use an extra disc.

 

[ragdoll]

You gotta remove all info in order to remove a partition. But really, there is no reason to remove a partion. Use it as you would use an extra disc.

Nah, Dells are weird. You can't see their system partitions in Windows because they don't have drive letters assigned to them. Plus they are usually used for something else important.... like Dell Utilities.

PM me and I'll give you my number, I'll talk you through how to check where your HDD is going.

 

[midwest]

gimme a week or so to play with it and see what I can do.....

 

[BockHawk]

You should definitely be seeing rougly 55.8 Gb in windows file system. The rest has to be in Dell's fun little utility partition. The thing is, I've never seen Dell use a partition that BIG for the util partition.

The conversion factor is about 0.93 to go between DOS and windows file systems.

If you do home movies, music and all that crap, why not just spring for the bigger HD from the get-go? Oh, and if you want to recover the space used by the util partition, right click on My Computer, select Manage. Towards the bottom of the screen that pops up, you will see Disk Manager. This should show all the partitions on your physical drive. You can easily delete/create/resize partitions with this utility. I'll be pretty surprised if the Dell utility partition is bigger than 39 MB, though.

 

[ragdoll]

You should definitely be seeing rougly 55.8 Gb in windows file system. The rest has to be in Dell's fun little utility partition. The thing is, I've never seen Dell use a partition that BIG for the util partition.

The conversion factor is about 0.93 to go between DOS and windows file systems.

If you do home movies, music and all that crap, why not just spring for the bigger HD from the get-go? Oh, and if you want to recover the space used by the util partition, right click on My Computer, select Manage. Towards the bottom of the screen that pops up, you will see Disk Manager. This should show all the partitions on your physical drive. You can easily delete/create/resize partitions with this utility. I'll be pretty surprised if the Dell utility partition is bigger than 39 MB, though.

I agree about the Util partition size. I was more using it as an example of unaccounted space. I was thinking that maybe there is a 3rd partition that has been lobbed off. For what? I don't know.