Hard Drive Not the Right Size

[Mr. Goodbytes]

Ok, I know that when you buy a hard drive, let's say 80GB, you're not going to get 80GB to use once it's partitioned and formatted. However, only getting 69GB is a bit ridiculous I think. This isn't a drive I bought, however. It is the drive that came with my new Dell laptop. I checked the volumes for the drive in the device manager. Instead of one partition, I have 3. One is 47 MB, one is 4744 MB, and the only useable partition is 70065MB. Is it common practice for Dell to screw around like this? I remember Compaqs and some other brands used to make a system restore partition, but you could actually access it. These partitions don't have any drive letters assigned. Any ideas?

[DeathWish187]

ive had 2 80Gb's n they come out to around 74Gb
ive never rlly played w/prebuilts, but id think you may be able to delete the partitions if you were doing fresh OS install, maybe, unsure though

[dr_roberts49]

Unless you own a copy of XP Home or Pro edition, I wouldn't mess with deleting those Dell partitions by doing a fresh install. Since you got it from Dell, any disks they've provided for you will probably put you right back to where you are now. You might try and ask Dell or wait and see if someone on TechiMO has an answer for you.

Robert

[osprey4]

Dell installs the PC Restore utility on one partition and their diagnostic utility on another. If you have a Dell Windows XP Reinstallation disc and a Dell resource CD, you can blow both of those partitions away, which is exactly what I would do.

If you do not have these discs, you can get them free from Dell as long as your system is under warranty. Otherwise you'll need to create your own Windows disc, which is a laborious process.

[Mr. Goodbytes]

Yeah, I specifically ordered the reinstallation and resource CD's to avoid having the drive partitioned that way. I suppose I'll have to wipe them out. They could have been nice and put the useless partitions after C: but I suppose that's what I get to deal with when buying non-IBM or Toshiba.