I just got my Dell, THERES PROBLEMS!!! Please help.

Dell creates a separate partition (Approximately 10 GB) which contains the recovery files to do a freah install of windows including drivers.

a 320 GB HD will have about 300 GB of usuable space as well.

So it seems to be correct providing this hidden partition is there.

If you do not have reinstall disks I believe you can create them as well

Check your guide for the key strokes to start the reinstall process which you press during boot up.

I have the Same Problem

I have the same problem. Ordered a 320GB hard drive and received a 288 GB hard drive. That is 22GB short (even when you allow for hidden partitions) Why do I need to reinstall disks -- never had to do this before????

This is the OLD, "What is a byte?" question/deception that's been plaguing this business since its infancy. Hard drive manufactures market and "HYPE" drive size based on volumes enumerated in base 10. Everywhere else in the computer world from software writers to hardware manufactures it isn't, instead they base on binary values.

So, 1k of memory = 1024 bytes, 1meg of memory = 1,048,576 bytes, 1gig of memory = 1,073,741,824 bytes of storage capacity; 1k of hard drive space = 1,000 bytes, 1meg hard drive space = 1,000,000 bytes, 1gig hard drive space = 1,000,000,000 bytes of storage capacity.

This difference in calculation has been going on from at least the time of sale of the first IBM PC. It didn't matter too much when computers were sold with only 512K of RAM and 30meg hard drives, but now that typical machines boast several hundred GB drives the difference is tremendous.

To calculate the actual space of your 320 gig drives, do to the different definitions of a KB. Divide 320GB (320 x 1,000,000,000) by 1,073,741,824 (the amount of a "true" GB) which =298.023223876953125. So in this example a 320gig drive really only has 298gigs of space because all OSes, software and hardware universally recognize the lower (binary) value for calculating volume size.

So, if you only have a 298gig drive to begin with, then add a diagnostic partition, and a recovery partition (which together take up about 10gigs), to the mix, you only have left 288gigs. Which is the figure you folks have left for your primary Windows partition.

I hope this helps,
Ciao

Thank you!

Thank you so much for the explanation. It would have been nice if Dell sent a note explaning it. I talked with 5 Dell reps and then was cut off before I gave up on trying to figure out why. Thank you....now I don't feel like I was cheated!