Question: I just installed a wester digital 250gb SATA HD, I installed the drivers/software and the hard drive is working fine, but I'm missing about 20-30gbs of space. My HD reads 233gbs instead of 250gbs. Why is this? How can I recover the 20-30gbs that is missing on my HD?
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Recovering Unallocated Space
- Thread starter gclef101
- Start date
There is no missing space since a WD 250gb ide hard drive normally sees 238.4gb approximately after the some space is used for master boot record if there's an OS installed and the means of partitioning. The lower total drive space is what is available for immediate use. Take an old dos boot floppy and change to the prompt for the drive if you can get sata drivers loaded and type the dir command to see the actual figure climbs over 250,000,000,000bytes
Drive totals in 120gb, 160gb, 200gb, 250gb, 320gb, and others is more or less a rounded figure not a conversion method used in math to calculate actual drive space. Everybody gets a bug in their craw when first seeing the apparent discrepancy and thinking something is wrong. It isn't! The rounded figures are more for marketing reasons and not computer science related totals.
Drive totals in 120gb, 160gb, 200gb, 250gb, 320gb, and others is more or less a rounded figure not a conversion method used in math to calculate actual drive space. Everybody gets a bug in their craw when first seeing the apparent discrepancy and thinking something is wrong. It isn't! The rounded figures are more for marketing reasons and not computer science related totals.
Hey,
I had this problem with my 250gb western digital though i had130gb of unpartioned space.
Go on to the western digital website and download a program called Data Lifeguard Tools. It allows you to use unpartioned space though it will create a new partition for the recovered space!
I had this problem with my 250gb western digital though i had130gb of unpartioned space.
Go on to the western digital website and download a program called Data Lifeguard Tools. It allows you to use unpartioned space though it will create a new partition for the recovered space!
I'm currently waiting to see Vista works out in this area. If you find that some of the available space is actually unallocated from not using all available when creating the primary there are options like disk partitioning tools other then the Windows installer to resize partitions. What these would do is stretch the existing one into that space to increase it's size.
Besides the mbr and partition information the process of creating partitions as well as the amount of space taken up by the operating system used. I should see about 480gb when I drop the new WD 500gb sata drive in here.
Besides the mbr and partition information the process of creating partitions as well as the amount of space taken up by the operating system used. I should see about 480gb when I drop the new WD 500gb sata drive in here.