Computer not seeing all hard drive capacity???

[demonbrawn]

I'm pretty sure there's some software out there that will enable you computer to see your hard drive's full storage capacity. I have a 320GB HD and my computer only recognizes about 299 of that. Where can I find this software?

[Alec§taar]

I'm pretty sure there's some software out there that will enable you computer to see your hard drive's full storage capacity. I have a 320GB HD and my computer only recognizes about 299 of that. Where can I find this software?

LBA hack to registry, OR BIOS HDD "large" setting?

There's also "Drive Overlay" softwares many OEM's of HDD's make... check all online/look up on GOOGLE for each!

APK

[demonbrawn]

LBA hack to registry? I'll check HDD

[KennyT772]

your hard drive is fine. the space u think you are lacking is due to formatting and differences in the definition of gigabyte. to hard drive manufacturers its 1000000000 bytes but to windows its 1073741824 bytes to a gigabyte.

[Alec§taar]

your hard drive is fine. the space u think you are lacking is due to formatting and differences in the definition of gigabyte. to hard drive manufacturers its 1000000000 bytes but to windows its 1073741824 bytes to a gigabyte.

Kenny has a STRONG point above because your numbers are SO close! I think he's right on this one, & I am "wrong/off"... I didn't look @ your #'s closely enough, my bad!

Also, there's another phenomenon that makes you "lose space" & it's typically called "Cluster Slack" (another term to lookup) as well as how 1mb = 1024 bytes are translated/stated by HDD OEM's!

Simply because no filesystem is 100% space efficient! Think about it: NTFS goes down to std. size of 512 byte sectors... Each file occupies THAT much, even if a file is only 1 byte in size!

I say this also about Kenny's point & also the ones I state above, because the "barriers" are around 137gb today on the LBA (logical block address) thing I mention above & you are WAY too close in size diff. for that & far beyond that barrier...

(In the "olden days" of DOS/Win3.x, the barrier was 8.3gb iirc, & you had to use DriveOverlay softwares to overcome it etc., if your BIOS couldn't - this doesn't fit that by any means!)

APK

P.S.=> PLUS, if you use NTFS? IIRC, 20% of the open space is allocated to the MFT$ (master file table) as well... you lose there too!

EDIT PART: Going to show you/tip you guys off, to a BIG fault in NTFS (& very possibly, all other filesystems, check it)...

It might one you may not like because it would make one HELL of a virus (very insidious one):

NTFS has a problem - if you create, say a program, that creates NOTHING but zero byte sized files, constantly, in a loop...

Well, you'd probably tend think they eat NO SPACE, right?

WRONG!

That type of malicious code would eventually "BLOAT OUT" that MFT$, & flood your disk with the MFT$ itself & the table entries for those "zero byte" sized files...

Nothing in this universe if free, including on computers, for every action? There is an opposite & equal reaction...

(I have a tendency to "overeducate" & go off on tangents, bear with me, because imo... when folks ask? Don't "give them a fish: Give them a pole & teach them HOW TO FISH" etc. & that saves time later and makes them stronger giving them the ability to REASON things out for themselves, not keeping them in the dark - plus, lol, they tend to ask less questions & bug you this way too (bonus) because you made them stronger for the topic @ hand)... apk

[Migons]

320/1.024^3 = ~298 (GiB)

So everything's ok. Reason to this, check Kenny's reply.

[demonbrawn]

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.