is it possible to delete space from a HD ?

robbie_998

right, well a bit of a long story *cough cough*

well i was going about partition a drive to install and additional OS which involved shrinking a bit of space i dont use on the C: and expanding another partition to make it big enough.

partition magic was recommended to me but turned out to be absolute crap and actually some how deleted everything on my hard drive.

so basically i treated my computer as brand new and just formatted everything and reinstalled everything from scratch, any important files or anything were on an external HD anyway so that was good.

but when i installed everything all was fine until that was when i clicked my computer and saw the C: was perfect but the was missing about 3-4 GB's from it. I had a look in the partition management and there's no unused space or anything there, everything seems to be in its place there, so 3-4 GB's of space just vanished into thin air.

am i just missing something or is there something i can do to get it back ?

cheers for the help

just added pics and the space missing from the would actually make up whats missing,

MunsterCycling

That is just the space taken by the file system, its normal

robbie_998

MunsterCycling wrote: »

That is just the space taken by the file system, its normal

i knew someone would say this.

its not actually, my laptop's HD has being formatted a few times and this is the first time this has ever happened... there has always being more space than that.

cheers for the reply though

MunsterCycling

Mmmm YES it is it depends what size the system chose for the sectors when you reformatted

robbie_998

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Mmmm YES it is it depends what size the system chose for the sectors when you reformatted

it was all done by windows 7 like the times before,

just had a look at the pics and its missing 5gigs in total.

5 gigs for that ???

its never done that before and i've installed the same OS about 3 times.

could there be a hidden part of the HD thats not being shown ?

MunsterCycling

is missing less than .05 of a GB, yes .05 of a GB

robbie_998

MunsterCycling wrote: »

is missing less than .05 of a GB, yes .05 of a GB

my has always, and i do mean always 10.00GB exactly though but this is a first ?

Overheal

wtf is with the OEM partition in the 2nd image?

robbie_998

Overheal wrote: »

wtf is with the OEM partition in the 2nd image?

why whats that ?

i have no idea why its there or what it does

Overheal

neither do I!

edit: googleing seems to suggest it might be where your laptop vendor stores diagnostic programs that you click into by pressing F-keys when you boot the machine.

I would contact the manufacturer (either of the laptop or the hard drive) and ask them about it.

robbie_998

Overheal wrote: »

neither do I!

edit: googleing seems to suggest it might be where your laptop vendor stores diagnostic programs that you click into by pressing F-keys when you boot the machine.

yeah google got me that too.

just found something else (see pic) just saw how to do this on another site while finding out about that OEM partition.

so thats showing about 5 gigs of the hard drive not existing anymore ?

MunsterCycling

74 GiB is the formatted size of an 80 GB hard drive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

robbie_998

MunsterCycling wrote: »

74 GiB is the formatted size of an 80 GB hard drive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

if what your saying is true then how was my 10 GB in size with the C: being 65GB ? and how come it just changed ?

it is very confusing

wolfric

As an addition to all the great responses and to answer your first question no. Free space cannot be deleted or lost (as long as it's all partitioned) I've no objection to trying to figure out what mechanism gives the illusion of that but just so you know that it IS all still there.

robbie_998

wolfric wrote: »

As an addition to all the great responses and to answer your first question no. Free space cannot be deleted or lost (as long as it's all partitioned) I've no objection to trying to figure out what mechanism gives the illusion of that but just so you know that it IS all still there.

yes its still there but is it hidden or something ?

is there any way to revive it ?

wolfric

no it's almost like an "optical illusion" it's not zoned againsed use it's just used in such a way that it DISPLAYS as if it's lost. Could be all of the above as stated not to mention the fact that you know "80 gigs" isn't really "80 gigs" as displayed . It's all there don't worry.

robbie_998

wolfric wrote: »

no it's almost like an "optical illusion" it's not zoned againsed use it's just used in such a way that it DISPLAYS as if it's lost. Could be all of the above as stated not to mention the fact that you know "80 gigs" isn't really "80 gigs" as displayed . It's all there don't worry.

i know the 80 gigs your not actually gonna get all that but all i know is that before i did have a fair bit more than that now, if you see the 3rd pic it shows the HD is only 74 gigs but it was more than that before,

any ideas there ? 6 gigs of system files wouldnt really cover all that i dont think

wolfric

tell you what i want you to do. Right click each drive and press properties. attach pictures of those.

robbie_998

wolfric wrote: »

tell you what i want you to do. Right click each drive and press properties. attach pictures of those.

which part of the properties do you want, their all tabbed like general and so on

wolfric

general

edit: This is my 100g drive partitioned into 2 if you looked at the "round about" figures to the right you'd see it's only 930.99 gigs. where's the other 69.1 gigs you say... well look at the long figures... it's all there.

robbie_998

the two top partitions dont seem to have anything, all i get is the option of help.

robbie_998

wolfric wrote: »

general

edit: This is my 100g drive partitioned into 2 if you looked at the "round about" figures to the right you'd see it's only 930.99 gigs. where's the other 69.1 gigs you say... well look at the long figures... it's all there.

so if your looking at my figures there then i have 78 gigs ?

wolfric

Don't think you ever told us how much you were supposed to have.

I see 80 gigs there. You're forgetting the 2 gig partition above. From just using linux i'm at a habit to say it's a swap partition. I've no idea if windows 7 have implemented this idea but they could have. (basically virtual memory- hard drive extension of your ram)

the 45 meg is your mbr if i'm not mistaken

robbie_998

wolfric wrote: »

Don't think you ever told us how much you were supposed to have

the C: was always 65,
10

then the 2 gigs and that 54 megs (or whatevver) in the disk management.

what was the 2 gigs for ? it was just a primary partition ?

wolfric

Ugh i'm tired of this it's what like 5 gigs? Go get one of those usb flash drives for 10 quid for the extra 5 gigs. I'm going to bed. Boot up a windows install cd and go to partition drive. You'll get a table with accurate list of partitions and sizes. Either that or a linux live cd. good luck

robbie_998

wolfric wrote: »

Ugh i'm tired of this it's what like 5 gigs? Go get one of those usb flash drives for 10 quid for the extra 5 gigs. I'm going to bed. Boot up a windows install cd and go to partition drive. You'll get a table with accurate list of partitions and sizes. Either that or a linux live cd. good luck

ok will try that later,

thanks

robbie_998

wolfric wrote: »

Ugh i'm tired of this it's what like 5 gigs? Go get one of those usb flash drives for 10 quid for the extra 5 gigs. I'm going to bed. Boot up a windows install cd and go to partition drive. You'll get a table with accurate list of partitions and sizes. Either that or a linux live cd. good luck

had a go at the installation disk on boot up and all it brought up was partition 2 and 3 ( C: + )

75 gigs in total

EDIT: ah feck it i'm not bothered anymore, i'll live without it !

thanks anyway peeps !