Missing 11.2 GB from my HD

Drumguy

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Apr 17, 2004
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When I defrag my 160 GB HD, the useable space for my C drive shows as 143 GB and the D drive shows 5.8 GB useable space. If I remember how to add, this comes to 148.8 GB. Any idea(s) where the remaining 11.2GBs are hiding out ??? System is a HP Pavillion a1112n
Gracias,
Drumguy
 

theworminator

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Aug 24, 2006
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Might be just the way they name it. The companies say that 1 megabyte is 1000 kilobytes, while in real life, it's actually 1024 kilobytes. This actually makes quite a difference. I have a 80 gig hard drive, but only 74.4 is usable (so like...5.6 was...never there). You have 160 gig, so you'd lose twice as much: 11.2. This is my guess :lol:
 

pottymonster

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Dec 26, 2006
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hard drives are advertised based on 1 meg = 1000 kb.

in your operating system, it reads 1 meg = 1024 kb.

therefore, it appears you are missing space, but you arent. dont worry about it. its just different measurements.
 

Seifer

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Mar 13, 2006
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Wrong... System restore has no say in this case.

We are talking about missing GBytes not used.

No your wrong my system takes 1.3Gbytes for system restore. It all depends on the size of the hard disk and how much space has already been used. Those are just some of they key factors I could go in more depth but I'm a little bit pre-occupied.
 

yakyb

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yes but that has no say on the total GB availible only on what is left after few things have been installed

80Gb advertised
74GB after Format <------- WE are talking about this value here
70GB availible after windows install
68.7 availible after your system restore <---- Not this Value
 

Madwand

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When I defrag my 160 GB HD, the useable space for my C drive shows as 143 GB and the D drive shows 5.8 GB useable space. If I remember how to add, this comes to 148.8 GB. Any idea(s) where the remaining 11.2GBs are hiding out ?

"G" is an SI prefix, which means 10^9. In computer applications, G is sometimes but not always defined as 2^30, which lead to such confusion and no real benefit. Modern implementations are starting to use "Gi" to denote the binary version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

160 GB = 160 * 10^9 B ~ 149 * 2^30 = 149 GiB.

So, assuming a small calculation / overhead factor, everything looks fine, except for the 10^9 vs. 2^30 confusion.

Measurements should not be this confusing and subject to interpretation according to context. G is an SI prefix, and the problem is due to some computer users using it to mean a different binary amount, which is just confusing and error-prone.