help my hard drive is not showing the full gbs?

Question

yes i have a maxtor 160gb hd and it is only showing 128 gb in windows xp whare is the outher 32gbs that are missing

Answer 1

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Your hard drive may show less space than the published specifications due to a number of reasons.

1. The way size is calculated and displayed.

2. Any "Partitions" on the disk will change the total in a specific partition.

3. Hidden files and folders decrease available space.

4. Compression increases the apparent size, but not the physical size.

5. Drives larger than the OS or Drivers natively supports.

First, the definition of a megabytes (or gigabytes) is a unit of data storage capacity measured in 1,048,576 bytes (or 1024KB). The larger the numbers, the more apparent the size difference will be when listing the size as megabytes (or gigabytes) versus bytes. Actually, both numbers are correct. The noticeable difference is due to the 1024KB definition of a megabyte. This is why a 95.3GB hard drive can also be listed as having 102 billion bytes of total space. Just think of it as "round off" In the screen shot at right: The first number is the total number of bytes, the second number is based on the number of megabytes or gigabytes.

Second, some computers have a non-DOS hard drive partition that is used for features such as Save to Disk, Hibernation, or Recovery. This partition is not normally reported by the operating system, although it can be viewed using a disk partition utility. This is very common on desktops and laptops. NOTE: Partition information will be created or formatted automatically during initial system setup and a system recovery.

Third, by default, all system files are hidden and cannot be seen. This may adversely affect the reporting of available hard drive space. You can set your Folder Options so you view system and hidden files and folders, but do be careful as changes to system files can adversely affect your system.

Fourth, if you turn on Compression for a drive, it will increase reported free space and used space, but since compression is based upon the actual contents, this number is not fixed, but will change as files are added or changed.

Fifth, older operating systems did not support some of today's larger drives, so the total space reported may be much smaller than the drive specifications.

It is also worth noting that bad sectors are corrected by your operating system and can change the total drive space, free space, or used space as well.

So as long as a drive is reporting a value approximately close to the specification value, you can be comfortable that you received the right drive and that you are getting to correct data storage. Of course, tuning of your drive's partitions and options can yield optimal values, but this is not something for the average user to explore.

Answer 2

The rest is unallocated. Check the your Disk Managment to view the full GB. Go to Control Panel->Admin Tools->Computer Management->Disk Managment.

Answer 3

Some of this 'missing' space is used as a reserve for repairing bad sectors, some of it is used for system structure itself. Different mfgr's have different values for these.

Another possibility is a rootkit; usually malware.

Detect these by using 'rootkit reveal' (freeware), available from the Microsoft website.

Answer 4

All HDD would not tutor finished area, Partitioning takes area whilst u could additionally verify finished area in BIOS / setup the place HDD call & area are precisely shown, If comparable isn't around 750 at BIOS then u could complaint to employer.

Answer 5

it's used by the software that's already uploaded to you're computer when you bought it.