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Missing GB (continued from the "HELP!" thread)

S

spacegravity4me

n00b
Joined
Jan 12, 2008
Messages
14
My point from earlier, before the thread was closed, was that neither linux or windows is able to see my 100GB hard drive as 97.3 GB after a full format. Instead it shows my total hard drive space is 93.2 GB. What changed to make me lose 4 GB of, what is in my situation, very valuable storage space? To clarify. One time I formated my hd by using windows partitioning software BEFORE I installed Vista, the software that asks you which drive you'd like to install Vista to; the software that shows up during the Vista installation, and it showed 97GB. Later, after having used Vista's "internal" (i.e. post vista install. While using vista.) partitioning software I deleted some partitions and then something changed. Vista now read that I only had 93GB. I was confused as to what to do. With my acer recovery disks not working for an unknown reason, I was left with two options. 1. restart the pc and let the vista upgrade disc boot and reinstall windows, thus allowing it to be reformatted in the process, and hopefully undoing whatever it was I did. OR 2. restart my pc with the ubuntu 7.10 cd in the tray, boot to the live cd, choose to install to my pc, and then choose the option that uses my entire drive, sans partitions, when installing, thus reformatting my computer and undoing whatever it was i did. I chose option 1, but upon reaching the install screen windows still read that the HD was 93GB. I deleted the info on the drive, as I was given the option, and installed vista again only to find the problem not solved. I then chose option 2. Option two had worked previously(thus I've swithed through operating systems repeatedly in attempts to fully format my hd) however now it is not working either. Thus, even with my HD formatted, all partitions deleted, etc. My computer only reads my HD as 93GB instead of 97GB. Yes, I know what is normal as far as how much space is usually seen on HD's despite what is advertised on the box, and I am telling you that normal for mine is 97GB, not 93GB! I am not being rude, I am simply very short on time. Very. Has anyone ever had this problem before? Perhaps, upon installation, neither OS fully formated my HD and undid my mistake? Is there another way to completely format my pc? I need help. Sorry about the caps and all. Whatever, when in rome I suppose. The forums I usually use don't fuss about such things, so I appologize. Classic noobness. lol Any help is greatly appreciated and please don't lock this thread either. I hope I've made everything as clear as possible this time, I was in a great hurry earlier and freaked out slightly. Thank you and I look forward to any responses you may have.
 
Well, a 100GB advertised drive listed using the decimal system. So it'd physically have 100,000,000,000 bytes (100 billion). Windows/Linux/MacOS X/etc report drive space using the binary system.

Decimal Conversion
100,000,000,000 bytes / 1000 = 100,000,000 kilobytes
100,000,000 kilobytes / 1000 = 100,000 megabytes
100,000 megabytes / 1000 = 100 gigabytes

Binary Conversion
100,000,000,000 bytes / 1024 = 97,656,250 kilobytes (<-- probably where you saw 97)
97,656,250 kilobytes / 1024 = 95,367.43 megabyrtes
95,367.43 megabyrtes / 1024 = 93.13 gigabytes

Now, a 100GB drive isn't going be EXACTLY 100,000,000,000 bytes. It'll vary by +/- a hundred million bytes or so depending on the model and manufacturer. But to get 97.3gigabytes after conversion you'd have to have about 104,475,079,475 actual on drive bytes, which is nearly 5 billion bytes of variance.
 
I see what you are saying. But a week ago, before I started this mess, my computer never, ever said 93.2GB. So how was there such an abrupt change?
 
spacegravity4me said:
I see what you are saying. But a week ago, before I started this mess, my computer never, ever said 93.2GB. So how was there such an abrupt change?
Click to expand...

Are you sure it wasn't reporting kilobytes (which would be around 97 million) and you just dropped the remaining numbers to convert to GB? I know I do that quite a bit when I want to see roughly how much space something is and I'm getting a kilobyte report.

(In fact, I believe XP still reports free space in kilobytes free).
 
I don't know, but I know it's the same thing I see when I go to My Computer and look at how big my HD is. It used to be bigger now it is smaller. :confused:
 
I'm wondering if there isn't some unallocated space for some quirky reason...a Disk Management screenshot will tell the tale...
 
herer ya go guys.

my.php
 
spacegravity4me said:
herer ya go guys.

my.php
Click to expand...

Have you changed any BIOS settings for your hard drive (e.g. LBA to Large) Because what you just posted would show your entire drive including freespace, linux partitions, hidden partitions, etc.

EDIT:

Your original post is a jumbled mess and hard to decipher. If you could list a numbered step by step procedure on exactly what you did before and after you noticed the missing space.
for example. Keep it very simple and in order with one detail per line.

1: OS: action took
2: OS: action took
3: OS: action took
 
1. i installed ubuntu 7.10.
2. i installed vista over ubuntu, i.e. erasing it.
3. i went to this site http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/windows-vista-tutorials/80439-dual-boot-vista-linux-vista-installed-first.html and began following the step by step instructions.
4.When opening the drive manager I found that I had 2 partitions on my HD. The first was the 97GB I told you about before and the second was a 2 GB partition that ubuntu had created when I had installed it.
5. I right clicked on the main partition and shrunk it. I was then left with three partitions. I believe they were 47,49, and 2.
*Note: My pc's default config was in two partitions, C & D. It was inconvienient so i decided I wanted it all combined as much as possible, with the exception of the NOW two needed partitions necessary for dual booting.
6. I needed to get rid of the 2 GB partition and combine it with the second newer partition.
I right-clicked on the 2 GB and selected delete. I got a message saying all data would be deleted and I clicked ok. This is where it gets confusing to ME. After I had deleted the 2 GB partition it was still there, only now it was unallocated if I remember correctly. It was late and i was exhausted so I just right clicked it again and clicked delete. I then got another message saying all data would be erased and the partition would be non-recoverable, or something along those lines. It seemed more serious but at the time i didn't think about it.
7. I then saw that the 2 GB partition was no longer there at all! I realized I screwed up and would need to somehow undo what I did. I restarted the pc with the vista install cd. It showed me the available drives and I chose to delete them and then chose to format. I know that order makes no sense, but go to install vista once an os is already present and you'll see that clicking the format option first will do nothing but give you an error message. You must first delete the info on the drive and then format.
8. Still not seeing the amount of space I wanted I decided to install ubuntu and let it wipe everything out. Ubuntu's install options have an option that let's you choose to use the entire drive rather than creating partitions. I chose this thinking it would fix the problem and somehow it did.
9. Things get sketchy from there. I kinda repeated the process again. See, after installing ubuntu i realized that i needed vista to be on the pc first. I booted from the vista cd again, it showed the correct drive size now. I installed vista. I then ran the drive manager. I shrank it. I followed the steps in the link up to where you are supposed to install ubuntu.
10. Half way through the ubuntu install i got an error saying that the cd was dirty and the install aborted but since it happened about 50% through completion it left only a partly installed ubuntu on the HD. This meant I had to do everything again! I tried just restarting the ubuntu install but came across errors so I then decided to start from scratch.
11. I installed vista again!
12. I don't know what went wrong from that point. After the many installs, deleting partitions, and formattings part of the disk space was missing. I believe this occured when I was trying to expand the second vista partition to take up any unallocated space. I don't know. From there on it's just been 93.2 GB or whatever I said. I gotta go to church so I'll be back later.
Someone else has bound to have had this problem before! Please help. Thanks.
 
spacegravity4me said:
6. I needed to get rid of the 2 GB partition and combine it with the second newer partition.
I right-clicked on the 2 GB and selected delete. I got a message saying all data would be deleted and I clicked ok. This is where it gets confusing to ME. After I had deleted the 2 GB partition it was still there, only now it was unallocated if I remember correctly. It was late and i was exhausted so I just right clicked it again and clicked delete. I then got another message saying all data would be erased and the partition would be non-recoverable, or something along those lines. It seemed more serious but at the time i didn't think about it.
.
Click to expand...

The 2GB partition you keep talking about sounds like a Linux Swap partition. They way you described having had to delete the partition twice sounds like Ubuntu created the Swap inside an Extended partition.

Here's a drive I created within an extended partition. It's not formatted so it says RAW. Your probably said Unknown if anything.

I deleted the RAW partition, but it leaves behind a "Free Space" partition.

Which I delete again and gives me an unallocated space

As you can see, there is no option to delete an unallocated space.
 
spacegravity4me said:
so nobody knows what happened? No one knows of another way to format my hd?
Click to expand...

You don't understand. There is absolutely NO WAY space can just disappear from the drive. Vista/Linux/XP/etc cannot change how much physical space is available from the drive. Disk Manager shows the entire disk as reported from the disk's own firmware. If it's now saying you have 93.6 GB then that means that you've ALWAYS had 93.6GB. You can try downloading DBAN and doing a zero wipe of every sector on the disk, but I can almost gaurantee you will still end up with 93.6GB of hard drive space.

On that note, if the "missing" 4GB of space is so valuable to you, look into upgrading to a 120 (111) or 160 (149) GB hard drive.
 
ryan is correct, but there's an easy way to solve this... what's the model number of the drive?
 
why is 7-10gb so important?

its only about the size of a DL DVD

Just buy a bigger drive...
 
Wow that conversion table looks good. Had no idea that's why harddrives are missing space, learn something new everyday.
 
it's a laptop, can I even upgrade it? Wow, I feel as though I have entered noob land. lol, I hate that feeling. Wish I knew all about this stuff. I could swear to you that at one point vista's disk manager said it was 97 GB. Swear! I use my laptop as a desktop replacement, journal, artpad, notebook for school, etc. I need all the space I can get my hands on. You guys know more than I do, that's clear, but I'm telling you it said it was larger than it is saying now. I just don't understand. Anymore ideas are welcome guys. Keep em coming. Thanks. :) Oh and the model is st9100822a ata device
 
spacegravity4me said:
it's a laptop, can I even upgrade it? Wow, I feel as though I have entered noob land. lol, I hate that feeling. Wish I knew all about this stuff. I could swear to you that at one point vista's disk manager said it was 97 GB. Swear! I use my laptop as a desktop replacement, journal, artpad, notebook for school, etc. I need all the space I can get my hands on. You guys know more than I do, that's clear, but I'm telling you it said it was larger than it is saying now. I just don't understand. Anymore ideas are welcome guys. Keep em coming. Thanks. :)
Click to expand...

Most laptop hard drives are replaceable. You'd have to give us a manufacturer and model to verify it. You can get laptop drives with up to 250GB now and even 7200RPMs.
 
that is balls to the wall awesome my friend! How about ssd's? I know the price is high but man would I love one of those! Oh, my laptop is an acer travelmate c314 xmi. Thanks.
 
According to a quick search it is indeed a 100GB (manufacturer terms) device, meaning 93.13GB formatted. It is impossible that you had 97GB at any point. Additionally it only has a rotational speed of 4200 RPM so it's a bit slower with access times than your 5400 RPM drives, let alone your 7200 RPM models. I would suggest you upgrade if space is very important to you.

Put SSD out of your mind for at least a year or two... Prohibitively expensive at this point.
 
Not too sure that you can upgrade to SSD drives since your laptop only uses PATA, not SATA which SSD and many newer drives use.

Anyway, you can upgrade to a 5400RPM 250GB drive for $145 if you wish:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136159

However for $13 less, you can get a 500GB External drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148235

If you want a faster boot up and load times for your laptop, get a 7200RPM drive for $87 instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145100
 
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