missing HD space

I have bought a new laptop which says it has 1GB RAM, 120GB but when I go to
computer it shows on C drive 60% free out of 51.8 GB and on D partition 100%
free out of 51.6GB. I am wondering whether the manufacturer telling me that
the HD is 103.4GB. Could anyone please tell me whether this is normal?

Hi,

To a drive manufacturer, 120GB is 120,000,000,000 bytes, with a single GB as
1,000,000,000 using base10 math. To a computer, that uses base2 or binary
math, a single GB is defined as 1024x1024x1024 bytes, or 1,073,741,824
bytes. So, a pc sees the drive as 120,000,000,00/1,073,741,824 or 111.76GB.
The additional missing 8GB may be part of your recovery partition, something
very common with laptops.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"brummyfan" <> wrote in message
news:4F34E67D-9A40-4B92-AB15-...
>I have bought a new laptop which says it has 1GB RAM, 120GB but when I go
>to
> computer it shows on C drive 60% free out of 51.8 GB and on D partition
> 100%
> free out of 51.6GB. I am wondering whether the manufacturer telling me
> that
> the HD is 103.4GB. Could anyone please tell me whether this is normal?

"Rick Rogers" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> To a drive manufacturer, 120GB is 120,000,000,000 bytes, with a single GB as
> 1,000,000,000 using base10 math. To a computer, that uses base2 or binary
> math, a single GB is defined as 1024x1024x1024 bytes, or 1,073,741,824
> bytes. So, a pc sees the drive as 120,000,000,00/1,073,741,824 or 111.76GB.
> The additional missing 8GB may be part of your recovery partition, something
> very common with laptops.
>
> --
> Best of Luck,
>
> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
> My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
>
> "brummyfan" <> wrote in message
> news:4F34E67D-9A40-4B92-AB15-...
> >I have bought a new laptop which says it has 1GB RAM, 120GB but when I go
> >to
> > computer it shows on C drive 60% free out of 51.8 GB and on D partition
> > 100%
> > free out of 51.6GB. I am wondering whether the manufacturer telling me
> > that
> > the HD is 103.4GB. Could anyone please tell me whether this is normal?
>
> Thank you Rick, I was worried that I paid too much for a 103GB laptop.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

brummyfan wrote:
> I have bought a new laptop which says it has 1GB RAM, 120GB but when
> I go to computer it shows on C drive 60% free out of 51.8 GB and on D
> partition 100% free out of 51.6GB. I am wondering whether the
> manufacturer telling me that the HD is 103.4GB. Could anyone please
> tell me whether this is normal?

It's normal.