320 hard drive shows size is only 295

Question

Just received a new M1530 with the 320 hard drive.  When looking in my computer, the drive shows up as two parts - one with 10 GB  which is 40% full and one that is 285 GB that is 10% full.  This is how it came from Dell as I have not added anything to it yet.  Why is there 25 GB missing in showing the total size?  Could Dell have installed the wrong size drive?  The number that shows up in the list is a 320 drive when I looked it up on the Dell site.

ejn63 · Answer

320G is decimal; Windows accounts for the drive in binary. 320 * 10^9/2^30 = 298 binary gigs.

There are three partitions on the drive - one tiny diagnostic partition, one 2.5G Media Direct, and the 10G restore partition.

se1234 · Answer

exactly like mine, but don't worry its normal and 298 are a loooooot you will take time to use all

DeathRider · Answer

@ejn63 wrote:

320G is decimal; Windows accounts for the drive in binary. 320 * 10^9/2^30 = 298 binary gigs.

There are three partitions on the drive - one tiny diagnostic partition, one 2.5G Media Direct, and the 10G restore partition.

To rehash, when a hard drive manufacturer determines hard drive size, they use 1000MB = 1GB, whereas in reality, 1024MB = 1GB

Locked Topics – Laptops General

Was this post helpful?