PC help: Where's my missing hard disk space?

Q I have bought a Fujitsu Siemens laptop pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium.

The specification stated a hard disk that is 120GB but Control Panel shows the following partitions: No name 11.72GB, System (C:) 78.76GB, Data (D:) 19.36GB, Unallocated 1.95GB. This adds up to a total of 111.79GB.

When I queried the apparent discrepancy with Fujitsu I was told that Vista uses a hidden partition for its system recovery files. Assuming this is the partition with no name, it still does not add up.
D Atcheson

A The problem here is that hard-disk makers define a gigabyte differently from everyone else.

The accepted opinion is that the move from byte to kilobyte to megabyte to gigabyte is a multiplication by 1,024. That’s because computers are binary devices and count in twos. So one gigabyte is 1 x 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024 = 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Unfortunately, hard-disk manufacturers round down the increase to 1,000, and write it in tiny letters on the disk, so they define a gigabyte as 1 x 1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000 = 1,000,000,000 bytes.

That works out as a difference of around 70MB lost per gigabyte.

In the days when disks were smaller than around 10GB no one really noticed but now with a disk of 120GB, a whopping 8GB is lost.

The no-name partition is as you say the recovery partition. You should leave this alone.

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