Can Someone Explain my HD?

I got the 160 GB drive for my Vostro 1400. I knew it wouldn't be a full 160 - it only reads 155. I'm fine with that. Of the 155, it says I have 144 available but then drops to 131 with only 13 GB used. In other words, w/o anything installed but what came from the factory, I'm already down 24 GB. The recovery partition is only 2 GB. Is there another partition I'm unaware of? Something has taken up 10 GB and I don't know what. Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

Media direct?

Moreover, if you have Vista, consider that it will eat up a considerable amount of space (about 10-15% of your disk space for recovery points and shadow files. It can be disabled/tweaked.

And then there is the GB - GiB factor.
160 GiB = 149 GB.
Maybe it's the other way around. At any rate, manufactuers always state the bigger number.

 

Go drive manager to see all the partitions.

 

Yeah, I checked Media Direct but that doesn't eat so much. Where do I find Drive Manager? I've never heard of that.

 

Ooops I mean disk management. Go to control panel, administrative tools, click on sub-option create/delete partitions

 

There's also the space used by Windows system restore & the Windows swap file.

 

If your laptop has the power saving settings turned on it should go on hibernate after enough time, in which case a decent amount of space is taken up just for that. This space probably wasn't taken when the manufacturers had it, which would explain why it seemed to come all of a sudden. As far as I know this can take up to 3GB, but it varies depending on what you have running when your computer goes into hibernation. You can delete these files in Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. You'll have to turn hibernating off unless you don't mind the space being taken up.

 

Thanks for the tips. They should solve my problem.

 

Shortcut for those of us who use the computer management tools a lot is to right click on my computer and select manage.

 

160gb HD=149GB to a computer. I have a 160gb HD on my vostro 1400 as well, its a self install and I only installed Vista and that sucker took up 14gb for me.
and w/o installing any other major programs, I have 134-135GB free, so what you have is pretty normal.

You have 3gb less than me because of the recovery partition and a hidden partition on a Dell installed hard drive.