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Missing a ton of Hard Drive Space.

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Ok, so my current PC has been running low on hard disk space, so I decided it was time to buy a newer and bigger one, and so I had to find out if first, my motherboard could handle a really big drive (like a 1TB) and the such.

So I download Sandra, and it apparently tells me that my current hard drive's capacity is 160 GB. I think it's obviously a mistake, because since I've had this computer, it's always told me it's capacity is 80 GB.

So I check the serial/product number the drive has, and lo and behold, indeed it's capacity is 160 GB.

So my question is, does anyone know how I can get all that extra missing space back (possibly without a complete reformat)?
Sandra told me my hard drive is WDC WD1600JS-00MHB5 (160 GB, SATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, 8MB Cache), but anytime I've looked at the C:\ drive, it's told me it's capacity is 80 GB (72.2 GB with system stuff.)

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Sounds like your system has an 80GB partition on a 160GB drive. That being said, you could also have a recovery image in the "missing space". What kind of PC do you have? What operating system are you using?

Once you know what is going on, you can adjust the parameters of your partition configuration with any number of partition managers. Also, Win 7's disk manager will let you resize existing partitions.

It's a HP Comp, 3.2 Ghz with multithread, 1.5 GB of RAM and I'm running Windows 7 (32-bit).
Indeed I thought perhaps it was partitioned (seeing as how it was sold to me by a guy that restores PC's and sells them), and when I got it, it had a C: and a E: drive of storage, them being 75 GB and 5 GB respectively, and I always wondered if I could just merge them all together and use the whole drive by itself. I never knew it was 160 GB, just 80 GB so it came as a shocking surprise lol. A friend suggested Partition Magic, and I'll have to try that when I get home, but I was wondering if anyone else had any other suggestions as to what to do?

You said Windows 7's Disk Manager lets you resize existing partitions. The thing is, I don't see the missing 80 GB from the drive, so it there a way to access them and make them available to me?
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So I was recommended to use Partition Magic but it turned out that it doesn't work for Windows 7, so I got Partition Master and I saw that the missing 80 GB was a deleted partition, and the program allowed me to recover it and then expand my C: drive to utilize the free space available, so now I have the full capacity of my hard drive!

Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions! :) 

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Hi Vavali

Be very careful with this kind of an operation as it can be very risky and i have plenty of times using partitioning tools. i would recommend that you make a complete back up of all you data on some kind ios external interface. Re-partitioning a drive is not recommended, and i would not advise it. unfortiantley if you do not want to reformat you are left with very little of a choice.

And yes partition magic is a good partitioning program

Kindest Regards Rob"
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