How to increase disk space?

well i bought a 320 gig hdd 7200rpm, and i only have about 258 free hard drive. Is that normal? i feel it is a gig especially since my 80 gig hard drive had around 75 gig to work work with. Having 258/320, i already have lost 62 gigs of hard drive.

Would disk defragment help?

The hard drive state that the max is 285, and 27 of the hard drive is in used. Is there a way to raise the 258 or 285? I have already reduced the amount of memory allowed for system restore.

I also reformatted the drive, deleted windows.old, did a disk clean up. Igot the comp 4 days ago

 

What you're not seeing is the partitions that are made for the Direct Media thing (plays movies and shows picture without booting up windows) and the Dell Restoration Functions (contains the entire Vista disc on the harddrive)

You do have the option to remove these if you feel you need to. Just search around for topics about formating and partitions and you'll find advice just waiting for you to venture into.

 

I'm sure it's not 258, instead 298.... check again..

 

All the partitions and everything should add up to 298GB.

 

well currently my OS is 253 (did add 5 gigs of stuff already) And recovery is 10gb. So there is a way to have 0 recovery and put it all in my OS hard drive? Also there is another partition for media direct?

 

Also just to keep in mind, the reason why your 320GB even after adding everyting up results in 298GB is because of the allocation unit size. By default, the allocation unit size is 4032 bytes meaning that it uses 4032 bytes for every 1 byte of space just for improved performance that is set when formatting the drive. If you really wanted to you could increase the capacity by lowering the allocation unit size... but the performance of the drive would be lower.

The M1530 comes with 4 Partitions:

1) Hidden recovery partition
2) C: Drive
3) D: Drive
4) Hidden Mediadirect Partition

You can view all partitions using "Disk Management" in Windows Vista.

 

i would be happy with 298, but i thought 258 was a bit odd I see the partition for the recovery 9.9 gigs. But no other partitions

Thanks forte i will check now

 

Not quite. Actually 320GB (base 10) is equal to 298.1GB (base 2). HDDs are marketed in base 10 numbers, computers read it in base 2. (If any readers are confused, Google "base 2" and "base 10")

You have 320,000,000,000 of bytes available on that drive. Somewhere.

 

Dell may have borrowed some of it though.

 

Sorry for not being clear. The reason is because of the allocation unit size as mentioned. If you format the drive with a lower allocation unit size, you will have increased available space on the drive, but lower performance that goes along with it.

I've never formatted a drive to have the lowest allocation unit size possible, but you would definitely get more space, though obviously not much. With the default allocation unit size of 4032, every single byte you copy, is expanded to 4032 bytes.

 

ok i am in the disk manager right, now i do see that the max is 298, but i wanted to increase the 253 and lower the media direct since i could care less about using it without booting windows etc. is that possible?

 

Like I said before, if you would search the forums reguarding reformating and deleting and creating partitions you would already understand whats going on and how to do whatever you want.

 

Excellent! Um, how much space exactly is on each of your partitions total?

The hidden recovery partition only takes about 500mb I believe, and the Mediadirect 3.5 only takes up 2.5GB.

Also keep in mind when you reformat, the Mediadirect 3.5 partition will take up 3GB (an additional 500mb more) if you choose to install it after a reformat and reinstall of windows. Don't ask me why, but it just does.

You can't simply lower the media direct partition, or the hidden recovery partition unless you completely get rid of them. However you might be able to shrink down the D: partition and increase the size of the C: partition.

 

yea you are correct the c is 285 the recovery is 10 gb, and the other two equal 3. I look through the search function and see it is not possible to do delete the recovery d drive through disk management. I guess it is normal to have to have 27 gig in use when you receive the comp with vista and stuff? 258 out 285.

 

Yeah, that is normal then. Windows Vista takes about 10GB + the extra space for the system restore and other stuff. Though you might want to uninstall some programs like Roxio for example just because there are other CD burning programs out there that take up less space, you could also do away with the antivirus.

 

thanks, i guess i will deal with the 258, and leave the 10 gb recovery alone