Thinkpads Forum

I got only 69.6GB available on C; did I do something wrong? I somehow ruined the harddrive and had to recover from the hidden partition. Or when we say 80GB we mean 80,000,000,000 bytes, not 8.589934e+10 bytes? I know this is dumb; but if I really lost some another 5GB of hd space, I will send it back to the tech support.

Thanks.

Yes, when HD manufacturers publish their HD sizes, it is in GigaBytes (GB), not GibiBytes (GiB). So your 80 "GB" HD is actually 76,293 MiB.

bessel wrote:I got only 69.6GB available on C; did I do something wrong? I somehow ruined the harddrive and had to recover from the hidden partition. Or when we say 80GB we mean 80,000,000,000 bytes, not 8.589934e+10 bytes? I know this is dumb; but if I really lost some another 5GB of hd space, I will send it back to the tech support.

Thanks.

Something else to take into consideration is that the Rescue & Recovery (XP & system software) is on a "hidden partition" which explains why you are not seeing as much available space and you might expect.

I know that there is a lot of conversationn on this forum about users wanting to (or actually) removing the resue & recovery partition. I choose to leave it in place, as it's a wonderful tool that can be indespensible if you have a major crash. At that point all you have to do is reboot, hold the ThinkVantage key down and it boots into this space and gives you a variety of recovery solutions.

The one I like is the choice to completely erase the drive and restore it to factory condition. This loads all the software and XP back so that you are starting fresh, just as it comes out of the box. It is better (IMHO) than dealing with restore discs etc. It's also very fast and automatic. Once you launch it, you can sit back and let it restore everything to orginal.

I have used this when I want to sell my computer, as it insures that my data is completely erased. In addition the new owner has the opportunity to set it up to his/her liking.

archer6 wrote:<snip>The one I like is the choice to completely erase the drive and restore it to factory condition. This loads all the software and XP back so that you are starting fresh, just as it comes out of the box. It is better (IMHO) than dealing with restore discs etc. <snip>

What a horrifying thought - IMHO, reinstalling apps, configuring settings on the OS and all the apps, and porting all the data over takes much longer than installing an OS. Other than prepping the laptop for a sale (which is a good idea archer), why would you ever restore to factory condition instead of restoring the disk image using Ghost or True Image?

Also, I would have thought the only advantage of the hidden partition over the restore dvd/cd, in terms doing a restore, is speed, but it seems that you see additional benefits?

serpico wrote:Other than prepping the laptop for a sale (which is a good idea archer), why would you ever restore to factory condition instead of restoring the disk image using Ghost or True Image?

In my particular case, I am a long time True Image user.

My initial thought was that the person may not have been familiar with ThinkPads and the rescue/recovery partition. It was simply a short answer to the question regarding disc space. I did not go into disc imaging, as that was not the question.

Perhaps my response was not clearly written, and a bit too wordy

archer6 wrote:

serpico wrote:Other than prepping the laptop for a sale (which is a good idea archer), why would you ever restore to factory condition instead of restoring the disk image using Ghost or True Image?

In my particular case, I am a long time True Image user.

My initial thought was that the person may not have been familiar with ThinkPads and the rescue/recovery partition. It was simply a short answer to the question regarding disc space. I did not go into disc imaging, as that was not the question.

Perhaps my response was not clearly written, and a bit too wordy

So does that mean you agree that restoring to factory condition is vastly inferior to restoring from the last good image backup? I ask because I am a relatively new (2 months or so) Thinkpad user. I am running Ghost and considering deleting the hidden partition because I cannot imagine the scenario where I will need it - other than if the laptop suffers serious problems while I'm on the road. To restore to factory condition if wish to sell the laptop, I can just use the restore dvd/cd set.