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Hard drive capacity problem

post #1 of 10
7/25/06 at 11:43pm
Thread Starter 
I just bought a dell inspiron e1705 with a 100GB 7200rpm sata harddrive (ST910021AS) pre-installed. When I check the hard drive capacity, it's about 91.75GB. Now don't jump up too soon I know that the 100GB is supposed to be 100000000000B physically, which is 10^11B/1024/1024/1024=93.13GB in windows. Still, it's about 1.4GB short. And yes, I used PartitionMagic 8, and counted all the partitions on the disk (Dell Utility, C, Dell Restore, etc.). So what's the catch? Is it common for hard drives to have slightly higher or lower capacities, or is there any other hidden part on the drive? Thanks!
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post #2 of 10
7/26/06 at 12:19am
Slighty lower or higher =YES I believe so as all drives have errors on them, will format slightly differant.

Also I think I read something about DELL I think having a section on the hard drive reserved for (can't remember)...
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post #3 of 10
7/26/06 at 12:50am
it's reserved for MediaDirect which is located in the HPA. many users have found it very difficult to reclaim this space.

see the 2nd post in this thread:
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread159964.html
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post #4 of 10
7/26/06 at 12:54am
Right click on your drive in my computer and hit properties. It will show you both sizes used in the computer industry. The capacity number on the left shows you the size assuming that 1MB = 1,000,000 bytes. The number on the right shows you the drive size assuming that 1MB = 1024b x 1024b = 1,048,576 bytes.

For instance my drive is 80GB. But in reality it is 80,015,491,072bytes. Windows reports this as 74.5GB. It should be something like 76.3GB according to windows, which leads me to believe that there must be some sort of overhead used on the disc, possibly for crc codes and such.
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post #5 of 10
7/26/06 at 12:55am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by PJK3
it's reserved for MediaDirect which is located in the HPA. many users have found it very difficult to reclaim this space.

see the 2nd post in this thread:
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread159964.html

I guess that's it. Thanks, man! Even the dell support person didn't mention this.
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post #6 of 10
7/26/06 at 10:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by decadent
I guess that's it. Thanks, man! Even the dell support person didn't mention this.

Not surpising.
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post #7 of 10
7/26/06 at 5:35pm
check out my thread: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread160165.html if you want to remove it.


I needed to image my old XPS gen 2 drive to the M1710 replacement dell sent me I was able to remove the dell media direct partition and claim the whole HD using the seagate utility.
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post #8 of 10
7/26/06 at 5:54pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by exabytehd
check out my thread: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread160165.html if you want to remove it. I needed to image my old XPS gen 2 drive to the M1710 replacement dell sent me I was able to remove the dell media direct partition and claim the whole HD using the seagate utility.
Thanks! But I've already reinstalled my system without removing the HPA. So I guess I'll just leave it alone, and try to reinstall the MediaDirect software later. Seems it's a lot of work, though.
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post #9 of 10
7/26/06 at 6:34pm
You just need to run the media direct repair program, nothing else. Complete reinstallation is for those that have a new HDD w/o the partition.
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post #10 of 10
7/26/06 at 6:37pm
Thread Starter 
But I thought the repair program won't work for me since I deleted the Dell Utilities partition. I'll try it later.
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