Hard Drive Size In New M1210 not correct?

I have the same issue. 80GB HD shows up as 68GB...that's one HELL of a partition. Just wish I could figure out how to remove it without having to do a complete re-install of my OS.

Advertised --- Actual Capacity
10GB --- 9.31 GB
20GB --- 18.63 GB
30GB --- 27.94 GB
40GB --- 37.25 GB
60GB --- 55.88 GB
80GB --- 74.51 GB
100GB --- 93.13 GB
120GB --- 111.76 GB
160GB --- 149.01 GB
180GB --- 167.64 GB
200GB --- 186.26 GB
250GB --- 232.83 GB


The actual formatted and usable storage area is often less than what is
advertised on the boxes of today's hard disks. It's not that the
manufactures are outright lying, instead they are taking advantage of the
fact that there's no standard set for how to describe a drives storage
capacity.


This results from a definitional difference among the terms kilobyte (K),
megabyte (MB), and gigabyte (GB). In short, here we use the base-two
definition favored by most of the computer industry and used within Windows
itself, whereas hard drive vendors favor the base-10 definitions. With the
base-two definition, a kilobyte equals 1,024 (210) bytes; a megabyte totals
1,048,576 (220) bytes, or 1,024 kilobytes; and a gigabyte equals
1,073,741,824 (230) bytes, or 1,024 megabytes. With the base-10 definition
used by storage companies, a kilobyte equals 1,000 bytes, a megabyte equals
1,000,000 bytes, and a gigabyte equals 1,000,000,000 bytes.


Put another way, to a hard drive manufacturer, a drive that holds 6,400,000
bytes of data holds 6.4GB; to software that uses the base-two definition,
the same drive holds 6GB of data, or 6,104MB.


...so you guys have about 112gb and 74gb to start with. The MediaDirect partition is set to about 5GB, so that leaves you with about 106-107GB and 68-69gb, so it's right along the lines of what you should have. I see no problems.

yeah...but think about it this way. When you buy a stick of 1GB RAM, you actually get 1024mb which is 1.024gb...and if you get TWO sticks...you're getting a whopping 48 extra MBs for free!!

Yes, WD settled the class action suit. You know what the settlement was? Every member of the class could get free backup software- WOW!. You know what the lawyers for the class got? Almost half a million - dollars, not software. Now who really won.

You'll also notice that most hard drives now say something about the difference between what's listed and the value you get once you format. Keep in mind that different file systems will result in different capacities. The file system requires control information that takes space on the drive but isn't available to the user.

And of course on the Dells there's the utility partition, the restore partition and possibly the media direct partition.

Bob

Aparrently you aren't paying close enough attention to what's being displayed in Disk management. ABSOLUTELY every single hard drive that is advertised at 120GB will read as only 111.78GB in a disk management utility. Govtcheez is right, with the 5GB given up for Dell media direct your HDD would only have a 106GB partition for Windows. If you'd like I can break this down to simple mathematics and how computers DON'T do things by the powers of 10 like people do, everything in computers is done by powers of 2 (or 16, which is easily converted to powers of 2)

I received my machine today and I noticed this too.

If you run "diskmgmt.msc" (from a run / command window / prompt) you'll see that there are three partitions.

On mine, one is a 55Mb FAT, one is a 4.63Gb FAT32, and the remainder is the C: drive. Not exactly sure which does what, but I'm pretty sure they're what bobbd is referring to.

The 55MB partition is your diagnostic partition (it's helpful to keep it so you're not always having to look for a resource CD). The 4.63 is either for Dell restore or Media Direct, can't remember which. And the C: drive is what's left over.

Again, one GB in the computer world is equal to 2^30 (the ^ denotes an exponent for the mathematically challenged). Or 1,073,741,824 In order to get 120 real GB your hard drive would have to have 128,849,018,880 Bytes. Unfortunately Hard Drives are manufactured in base 10 capacities. In fact they really are just rounding. 111GB is approximately 119 billion bytes, round up and you have 120 Billion.

There *IS* a dell restore partition on th xps m1210. I have used it.

Here is the lowdown on a 120GB HD in a m1210.

First Dell uses the HPA (Host Protected Area) for the Media Direct. It is not visable in Disk manager because the HD controller itself lies to the BIOS to hide it. That is between 1.5 and 2.0 GB.

The 55 MB is Dell Utilites.

The ~4.5 GB parition is where dell stores the ghost image (spanned across multiple files) that is used to restore by pressing either fn+f11 or ctr+f11 @ boot (can't remember which).

I removed the HPA (not easy and you can toast a drive) before I rebuild mine the way I wanted. I now have MediaDirect on a visable partition (after calling dell for a MediaDirect Reinstallation CD ... NOT REPAIR). so I see the full ~111.7 GB as expected when considering the Base2 vs. Base10 math issue.

Here is some really good info on DSR and MediaDirect HPA:

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect

and

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/

BTW: The ramification of the HPA is that Mr.Evil's statement "ABSOLUTELY every single hard drive that is advertised at 120GB will read as only 111.78GB in a disk management utility" is incorrect.

Furthermore the more common usage of the DCO portion of the ATA standard means that there are two ways for a HD to "lie" to the BIOS. HD Mfgs and warranty repair shops use DCOs to replace HDs under warranty. Say that your 40GB drive goes bad, but they only have 80GB in the warranty warehouse. They will apply a DCO so thet the physical 80GB dirve they ship you, is reporting to BIOS exactly like the 40GB drive it replaced.

Here is a great Doc outlining both HPA and DCO:

http://polya.computing.dcu.ie/wiki/i..._why_bother%3F

Of course in practice this means all the peeps with m1210 that "scratch" the HD and rebuild the box their own way, are not eliminating the HPA (which still has the MediaDirect image in it), because it still exists, it just is not usable, so they are giving up ~1.5-2.0 GB!


Router-Dude

I just installed a Hitachi 160 Gig Hard drive I ordered from NewEgg in my E1505, and it shows 149 Gig available.......So govtcheez is correct with his chart.......

Specs E1505 T2400 1.83 Core Duo
WSXGA+ True Life
X1400 256Mb
2Gig DDR2 667
160Gig Hitachi 5400 HD
8XDVD+R/-R Dual Sony
3945 Wireless