How do I check my harddrive space?

ds343

New Member
I just bought a used laptop online, EliteBook 8470p. The specs I bought it listed 500 GB of harddrive and 8 GB of RAM. When I click "Computer", it only lists OS (C:) at 64.5 GB (24 GB free) and HP_RECOVERY (D:) at 9.76 GB (2.83 GB free). Obviously, that is less than 500 GB.

However, when I go into "Computer Management" and then "Storage", I find that

SYSTEM is listed at 100 MB,
OS is listed at 64.57 GB NTFS,
HP_RECOVERY is listed at 9.76 GB NTFS,
Healthy (Recover Partition) is listed at 100 MB, and
"Unallocated" is listed at 391.23 GB.

Are specs, as listed, correct? How would I access "Unallocated" portion, if I wanted to save files on there for example?
 

Intel_man

VIP Member
You will have to go to Disk Management (right click the windows button in the start menu and select Disk Management). Scroll to the unallocated volume and right click the block. Choose New Simple Volume from the shortcut and go through the prompts it will guide you through to properly format the partition and assigning a drive letter to it.
 

ds343

New Member
Going through it, I get the message "There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete this operation" at the end. Not sure that maybe I need to assign it as letter C for it to work, but when I try that I get the message: "The letter C: is already mapped to a network share or a local path. In order to see the volume after the operation, you must remove current mapping."
 

Intel_man

VIP Member
Assign a letter that isn't already used. Letter C and D is already used for your OS and HP_Recovery.
 

ds343

New Member
john, The download worked after I figured out how to deal with the "no free MBR slots on the disk" issue.

beers, Yeah, I tried that but it still would not go through.
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
After you format the space, I would then merge it with drive C. I've never used mini partition tool, but it may have that option. You might want to backup your data prior to doing this.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
After you format the space, I would then merge it with drive C.
It can't be merged with C because the partitions aren't next to each other. The only way to do that would be to delete the recovery partition which would make it the last part of the drive unallocated then it could be merged. The only problem being the repercussions of deleting the recovery partition.
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
I thought perhaps Easeus Partition Manager could do it. I've merged partitions, but don't recall its mapping.
 
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