When is a 30gb drive only 15gb? help please

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riddley-walker · #1 Post by **riddley-walker** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 6:20 pm

I am a bit of a novice and would like some help/clarification if poss.
I have recently bought a T40 secondhand from a uk reseller on ebay.
It was advertised as 30 gb . I think it should be 30 gb as i don't think they made a 15gb drive - is this correct? (model number is 2373-14g , serial number kbxgx18)
The hard drive is not partitioned and shows c drive as being 15.1gb.
I have done a defrag and scandisk with only minor memory errors appearing which have now been corrected.
Can anyone find my lost 15gb? Thanks in advance.

pianowizard · #2 Post by **pianowizard** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 6:23 pm

If you feel comfortable taking out the hard drive, take it out and look up it's part number on Google. Remember to remove the battery and ground yourself before doing this.

#3 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 6:44 pm

You don't need to remove the hard drive to find the information. Go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware tab > Device Manager. Click on the + sign for the Disk drives. The model is probably listed with the manufacturer. If not, double-click on the drive there, then click on the Details tab. You should see the model number following the manufacturer. At least this is the case for my Fujitsu drive. Once you have the model number, just enter it in Google, then you can find the capacity of the drive. It is possible that you have more than one partition on the drive.

riddley-walker · #4 Post by **riddley-walker** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 6:53 pm

Thanks guys . According to the device manager its a fujitsu mhs2030at . A quick google says it should be 30 gb.

christopher_wolf · #5 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 6:55 pm

Welcome to the Thinkpad Forums

Did you check to see if it came with the Pre-desktop area partition on it or any previous backups thereof?

#6 Post by **rkawakami** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:08 pm

riddley-walker wrote:I think it should be 30 gb as i don't think they made a 15gb drive - is this correct? (model number is 2373-14g , serial number kbxgx18)

According to IBM support, the system shipped with a 30GB drive.

riddley-walker wrote:The hard drive is not partitioned and shows c drive as being 15.1gb.

Since you have verified the drive type as being a 30GB drive, then the drive IS partitioned. Do you have a "D" drive listed as a "Local Disk" when you double-click the "My Computer" icon? If so, there's your other 15GB. If you don't see a local disk drive "D", then I can only assume that somebody has partitioned your drive and NOT formatted the other half. You can check by opening the Disk Management window, thusly:

Click Start
Click Settings (not needed if running default Windows XP desktop)
Click Control Panel
Double-click Administrative Tools (you may have to enable "Classic View" to see this tool)
Double-click Computer Management
Click Disk Management under the Storage branch

This will give you a picture of how your disk drive is partitioned. Don't change anything here, just report what is under the "Volume" heading. You can click on the dividing line between Volume and Layout and drag it to the right to widen the column.

riddley-walker · #7 Post by **riddley-walker** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:30 pm

Great !- thanks Ray - there is 9.87 gb hiding in an e: drive. What do i need to now to make it useable.?
God I love the internet!
Much obliged

Riddley

#8 Post by **rkawakami** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:46 pm

riddley-walker wrote:Great !- thanks Ray - there is 9.87 gb hiding in an e: drive. What do i need to now to make it useable.?

Well, assuming you're still looking at the Disk Management screen, describe what your E: drive looks like. For an example, this is how my A31 disk is currently configured:

Screen capture of A31 disk (933x465 105KB)

You will see the I have a C: and D: drive, along with the IBM service partition. What's each description say for your E: drive in each column (layout, type, file system, etc.)? I don't want you to blow away anything that might have data on it

.

And sorry for the delay... I'm at work

(edit: And now that I think of it... if your Disk Management windows says you have an E: drive, then you should be able to access it with Window Explorer. See if you can open up the E: folder from within the My Computer icon/link.)

Hotbrick · #9 Post by **Hotbrick** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 5:11 am

Spacemonger is a great tool to see where your Gigs are:

http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/

riddley-walker · #10 Post by **riddley-walker** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 3:59 pm

The e: drive on the computer management screen reads as follows:

layout ........type.....file system...status....capacity...free space.free
partition.....basic........................healthy...9.87 GB...9.87 GB.....100%

on the My Computer screen there is no e: drive visible .

Don't know if its relevant but I have got Single File Restore shown on the my computer screen.

Cheers[/b]

#11 Post by **GomJabbar** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 5:07 pm

Looks to me like an unformatted partition (or else formatted with a non-windows file system). Notice no file system is listed.

#12 Post by **rkawakami** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 5:43 pm

Since there is nothing under the File System heading, it appears that the disk was partitioned but the space not formatted as either a FAT32 or NTFS file system. It's possible that the person who did this had a problem with some of the sectors that's now assigned to the E: drive and this was the only way they could ignore those bad sectors. It's also possible that somebody wanted to divide up the disk space into separate areas but never completed the job. Some of the other reasons why the disk was setup this way is for a different, bootable operating system (i.e., linux) or for use as a backup or restore area.

Question: What are the settings for disk drive D: ? Is that the Single File Restore area?

If it is possible, a complete system backup is suggested before proceeding with any of the following formatting instructions.

Without a separate partition utility program (ala Partition Magic), I believe you are stuck with the two drives unless you re-install the operating system. If you are sure you can live with two separate disks (and there's a very good reason why you should), then all you need to do is format that area and it should become available to Windows. However, whatever already exists in that area of the disk will be lost.

In the Disk Management window, in the area below the volume information, you should see DISK 0 and a pictorial diagram of the logical drives assigned to your hard drive. If you right-click in the area assigned to E: you should see a Format... option. Selecting the Format option should open up a window where you can specify the file system (FAT32 or NTFS), allocation unit size (leave at "default"). For Windows XP and 2000, you should select NTFS. Clicking the OK button should start the formatting process.

I said earlier that there's a good reason to have a separate E: drive. If you setup the system to install all of your programs on the C: drive and put all of your data onto the E: drive, then that makes backing up your data and re-installing an operating system easier.

riddley-walker · #13 Post by **riddley-walker** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 6:42 pm

The D: drive is labelled as being for the cd rom/dvd drive .

I have tried formatting the e: drive as per above instructions but,
i instantly get an error message from the Logical Disk Manager which says " the format did not complete successfully"

I can't find out which drive ar area the single file restore program is working from because when you right click it will only let you open or explore it - and there are no files listed in it to restore which seems a bit strange.
Another thing I have noticed is that under My Computer - Properties -Hardware, for both the C: drive and the D: drive , both the hard drive and the dvd drive appear , is this normal or is this a conflict which is preventing th re-format of the e: drive?

Thanks for all assistance thus far

#14 Post by **GomJabbar** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 6:55 pm

What you see regarding C and D is normal.

If I am not mistaken, some partitions created with non-Windows partitioning programs will not let Windows format them. You may be able to use fdisk to delete the partition, then recreate it. You can do this by booting up with a Windows install CD.

As rkawakami stated (more or less), a complete backup should be made before working with modifying partitions. I restate this so that you do not accidently lose important information on the hard drive while trying to reclaim the unavailable space.

#15 Post by **rkawakami** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:10 pm

riddley-walker wrote:The D: drive is labelled as being for the cd rom/dvd drive .

Okay. No problem.

riddley-walker wrote:I have tried formatting the e: drive as per above instructions but, i instantly get an error message from the Logical Disk Manager which says " the format did not complete successfully"

That would seem to say that there's a hardware problem with accessing that portion of the disk drive. This may tend to confirm that the drive had a known problem and that it was partitioned to "get rid of the error". At the moment, I don't know of any other problem that might cause that message.

riddley-walker wrote:I can't find out which drive ar area the single file restore program is working from because when you right click it will only let you open or explore it - and there are no files listed in it to restore which seems a bit strange.

Both machines I have here at work (XP and 2000) have the IBM restore partition listed as formatted as FAT32 and healthy, but I cannot open an Explorer window to those areas since I assume that there's no "regular" files stored there. I'm not sure what the "single file restore" area is for. It doesn't seem to follow what's on my T23 and A31 systems. Anyone else know?

riddley-walker wrote:Another thing I have noticed is that under My Computer - Properties -Hardware, for both the C: drive and the D: drive , both the hard drive and the dvd drive appear , is this normal or is this a conflict which is preventing th re-format of the e: drive?

Is this somewhere in the Device Manager tree? If so, you should see your hard disk drive listed separately from the DVD/CD-ROM drive. What operating system are you using?

riddley-walker · #16 Post by **riddley-walker** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:27 pm

Machine is running on XP service pack 2.
" Single file restore" was an IBM update that I installed a couple of weeks after being prompted that it was an update . It did take a long time to load so it might have something to do with the problem.
Have looked at system restore and uninstall programs to try and remove it , just in case, but system restore only goes back to beginning of december which is a bit odd as I've had this machine for about 8 weeks now. "single file restore" is not listed as a program that can be uninstalled.
Do I have to get the disks from Lenovo to re-install xp and drivers etc and if so do u have a link?
Cheers
Riddley

When is a 30gb drive only 15gb? help please

When is a 30gb drive only 15gb? help please

Re: When is a 30gb drive only 15gb? help please

Re: When is a 30gb drive only 15gb? help please

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