Did I Get Fucked?

[Undertow]

I have a question to anyone that can offer their opinion, expert advise or not.

I bought a name brand laptop a few days ago for a damn good price and think I got fucked on the hard drive space. In the advertisement and on the box it says it is supposed to come with 160 GB. However, when I click on the C drive it says I have only 122 GB available out of 140 GB. This is a brand spanking new laptop, right out of the box. Anyone know what could be up with the hard drive problem?

Other than that, I like it a lot. The price was great, something you don't come across too often. I pretty much payed $380 for a laptop with:

Vista
15.4 inch screen
2GB memory
DVD burner
HD ??? Supposed to be 160
Built in Wi/Fi.
Other software/accessories

Basically, I have about a week to return it. After that I am stuck with it. Odds are that I won't be able to get an exchange because they sold out in a matter of hours. It was one of those "while supplies last sales"

If you guys were in my shoes would you keep it, get your money back, or call someone and bitch? I have never heard of someone missing almost 40 GB that should be there. Any suggestions?

[BlondNblue]

You may actually have 160 GB hard drive. On 'C' drive it sounds like the OS combined with all the programs included with the machine plus the proprietary bullshit they throw in is coming close to 20GB worth of space.
You should also have a 'D' drive used as a recovery partition, and it is probably another 20 GB. In reality the 'D' drive is on your HDD...so 20G on C + 20 GB on D = 40GB added to your 120GB available = 160GB.

I must admit 20GB for the OS and software systems is HUGE, as is 20GB for a recovery partition.

You can remove most of the clutter you'll never use though.

[Undertow]

You may actually have 160 GB hard drive. On 'C' drive it sounds like the OS combined with all the programs included with the machine plus the proprietary bullshit they throw in is coming close to 20GB worth of space.
You should also have a 'D' drive used as a recovery partition, and it is probably another 20 GB. In reality the 'D' drive is on your HDD...so 20G on C + 20 GB on D = 40GB added to your 120GB available = 160GB.

I must admit 20GB for the OS and software systems is HUGE, as is 20GB for a recovery partition.

You can remove most of the clutter you'll never use though.

Thanks for the reply. I know what you are saying would be true if I was using XP. But I don't think I have another drive on Vista, as my D drive is my DVD burner. I wish it had XP, Vista seems harder to learn your way around, among other things.

As you said, the 40 GB discrepancy is huge for software and recovery. I need to do some looking around the system when I have more time and see what the deal is.

[Undertow]

I had to go into Administrative Tools/ Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management. I was able to account for 150 GB. I guess I have 2 partition drives that weren't assigned letters and didn't show up on the My computer menu for some reason. I still plan to find the other 10 GB !

[BlondNblue]

If you know about BIOS it will tell you the size of it.

[Mr. Drummond]

Vista will choke on a notebook with only 2GB of memory if you run any programs that are the least bit memory intensive. 4GB is a good starting point for Vista notebooks, IMHO.

Of course the notebook is probably upgradeable to 4GB...

[White_Is_Right]

I doubt that you got shafted. However, there is an issue that most folks are still to this day are unaware of. Perhaps Undertow already knows this, but it seems to me that even if he does, most people don't. So I should make this post anyway.

It's the issue of marketing. For marketing purposes, storage is measured differently than how it's measured for actual storage purposes. For obvious reasons, the companies will want to make the specs sound better, without actually lying, so they get technical.

For example, a gigabyte for marketing purposes is 1,000,000,000 bytes. However, for storage purposes, and what the OS does, a gigabyte is really 1,073,741,824 bytes. So when you see the amount of storage in your OS, the number of gigabytes you see will always be less.

So if you buy a 500GB hard drive, in the OS you will really see 465.66GB.

I think this behavior is atrocious on the part of the hard drive companies, and should cease. However, this difference has always been present. In the past, the difference was less of a big deal. However, it's getting more noticeable.

[Clorox]

Also, if you have Norton Antivirus pre-installed on your laptop, it takes up a hell of alot of disk space. Especially if you have the full suite.

[Jacques]

Depending on a number of factors, some of your disk space may be used in a hidden partition.

Frequently, Dell, HP and other PC vendors create a diagnostic partition on each disk that leaves their factory pre-loaded with an operating system including windows.

This partition may be used to boot the machine in the event that the primary partition becomes corrupt or otherwise unusable. It also contains hardware diagnostic programs and other utilities that are very helpful for service personal.

Another thing to keep in mind, some of the high-end hard disks actually pre-allocate some of their space to be used only in the future if and when some sectors on the disk fail and become unusable. When this happens, the disk will detect the failed/failing sector and re-map any data on the failed block of blocks to a good block from the reserved block pool. The upshot is that you disk may be a bit smaller initially, but it will provide generally more reliable service over its useful lifetime.

I hope some of this explains your missing mega-bytes. They may be there, just hidden for now.

[Massa Charlie]

Also, if you have Norton Antivirus pre-installed on your laptop, it takes up a hell of alot of disk space. Especially if you have the full suite.

If you have Norton anything on your laptop, you need to shitcan the Norton and get something else. Norton is notorious for creating more problems than it solves — in fact, it creates problems just so it can pretend to solve them.

Anyway, it's not unusual for new harddrives to have significantly less capacity than is advertised. Even if you flatlined the drive and completely re-initialized it, you'd still find your capacity 2 or 3 GB short of advertised capacity.

However, when you're talking about gigabytes of storage, you're talking about a hell of a lot of storage, anyway, for the typical user. Somebody who's heavily into graphic, video and music applications probably needs a few terabytes of storage, but a regular user might not fill up 200 GB in a fucking year.

:hnk

[JigSlinger]

Undertow,
I service laptops, etc.......... This is what I would do.
1. I would burn the Recovery DVDs for your laptop. That ususally requires 2 blank DVD+R DVDs.
After completing that, and making sure the Recovery DVDs work by checking the 'verification' box when you are burning the DVDs. Also double-check by placing DVD #1 in the DVD drive and rebooting the laptop. When it boots up, the disk should say that it will now restore your laptop. EXIT at this point, and remove the DVD from the drive, and boot your laptop normally.
2. Open My Computer, and delete the recovery DVD stuff on the recovery drive (usually D:/).
Now you can use the D:/ drive space for whatever.

If you want to partition your C:/ drive, I use the free EASEUS Partition Manager http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm
Works fine in Windows XP/Vista.

[103rapesAday]

I have a question to anyone that can offer their opinion, expert advise or not.

I bought a name brand laptop a few days ago for a damn good price and think I got fucked on the hard drive space. In the advertisement and on the box it says it is supposed to come with 160 GB. However, when I click on the C drive it says I have only 122 GB available out of 140 GB. This is a brand spanking new laptop, right out of the box. Anyone know what could be up with the hard drive problem?

Other than that, I like it a lot. The price was great, something you don't come across too often. I pretty much payed $380 for a laptop with:

Vista
15.4 inch screen
2GB memory
DVD burner
HD ??? Supposed to be 160
Built in Wi/Fi.
Other software/accessories

Basically, I have about a week to return it. After that I am stuck with it. Odds are that I won't be able to get an exchange because they sold out in a matter of hours. It was one of those "while supplies last sales"

If you guys were in my shoes would you keep it, get your money back, or call someone and bitch? I have never heard of someone missing almost 40 GB that should be there. Any suggestions?

Bestbuy sells a dual core laptop pretty much every week for $399 with with similar specs above. Acer brand partitions the hard drive into two halves but three partions, and you'll lose a little bit of space for the recovery sector (It's best benefit is that it literally allows you to "wipe" the computer to appear like out of the box condition, great if you intend to sell it later.) while some of the other companies (Toshiba, Dell, Compaq, HP, etc) have done similarly but have a recovery sector as well. 160gb hard drives are never truly 160gb, it's done for marketing usually it's going to be about 149.01gb after formating it into an NTFS partition. Mathematically 1GB = 1000MB = 1000000KB but that's based on a KB = 1000B a decimal system which is the math they market hard drive sizes on, but since computers are binary then a computer KB = 1024B but the way they calculate the size:

160 GB hard drive = 160000000KB decimal
160000000KB decimal * 1000KB binary/1024KB decimal * 1MB binary/1024KB binary * 1GB binary/1024MB binary = 149.01GB binary amount of actual space before you use it for anything!

Vista OS is somewhat bloated as well and will usually eat about 9GB+ just on the install. Luckily for you though we live in an age hard drive space is becoming dirt cheap, at pricewatch you can buy a 320GB harddrive for $61 including shipping (http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/notebook_320gb.htm) or if you prefer more space for the money you can buy an usb external 1TB for $109.95 including shipping (http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/usb_1tb.htm). Personally I never felt it was safe to carry so much information on something portable, you might want to consider a network storage option that you can access with your laptop instead, in the long run it's the future.

[103rapesAday]

I doubt that you got shafted. However, there is an issue that most folks are still to this day are unaware of. Perhaps Undertow already knows this, but it seems to me that even if he does, most people don't. So I should make this post anyway.

It's the issue of marketing. For marketing purposes, storage is measured differently than how it's measured for actual storage purposes. For obvious reasons, the companies will want to make the specs sound better, without actually lying, so they get technical.

For example, a gigabyte for marketing purposes is 1,000,000,000 bytes. However, for storage purposes, and what the OS does, a gigabyte is really 1,073,741,824 bytes. So when you see the amount of storage in your OS, the number of gigabytes you see will always be less.

So if you buy a 500GB hard drive, in the OS you will really see 465.66GB.

I think this behavior is atrocious on the part of the hard drive companies, and should cease. However, this difference has always been present. In the past, the difference was less of a big deal. However, it's getting more noticeable.

I agree there was some consumer that's been trying to sue the hard drive industry for years for false advertising and if it pans out I wonder what the settlement offer would be? I have about 50+ hard drives and it'd be nice to get them all new, in sata, and more capacity. I doubt if there is going to be any kind of real settlement but then if there's a nigger juror we can see more than the big 3 automakers begging for a loan.

:gibs

[Rise Against]

i dont know if it was mentioned yet but anything with a hard drive be at an ipod or a computer, the 160 gb or 500gb is before they format it from the factory. i bought a brand new 500gb hard drive and only had about 466gb do to manufacturing hard drives.

[White_Is_Right]

i dont know if it was mentioned yet but anything with a hard drive be at an ipod or a computer, the 160 gb or 500gb is before they format it from the factory. i bought a brand new 500gb hard drive and only had about 466gb do to manufacturing hard drives.

The post I made earlier in this thread explains what you have just described.

[Rise Against]

The post I made earlier in this thread explains what you have just described.

oh ok. i was running late and didnt have time to read throough everything. thumbsup

[Furious Fat Man]

definately a decent comp, undertow... you might be sad when you try to upgrade the ram in it though. i got a buddy who bought one, same specs as yours, and it caps out at 2gigs of ram. great machine, just wont do any high end gaming while ya gots vista on it. vista is eating almost all of that 2gigs of ram, especially if yer runnin the active desktop 3d ultra mega crap and some type of anti-virus.

if you do want to game on it, find a friend w/ a copy of windows xp and put it on there, it's not nearly the resourse hog that vista is. aaahhh