Hi, Barbara.
I thought I posted a response, but it looks like it didn't come through.
Yep. Both your messages arrived. ;<)
Anyway, I check the directories on the d drive through the command line
and
came up with 1869 files GB12,062,061,174 and 237 folders GB34,103,296
free.
(I'm not sure what the "free" was about)
First, a little HD 101...
GB means GigaByte. A "byte" is 8 bits. A bit is the smallest piece of info
a computer uses and a hard drive can store; 8 bits make one "byte", which
can represent one character, such as the letter "A" or the symbol "$".
Because the computer uses a binary system, rather than a decimal system,
most computer measurements deal in powers of 2, rather than in powers of 10.
A KB (kilobyte) is 2^10 bytes, or 1,024 bytes. For shorthand, since 1,024
is close to 1,000, and since often an approximation is "close enough", users
often referred to 16,000 as "16KB" or "16K", for example, even though 16 KB
is really 16,384. As we started dealing with bigger numbers, the
discrepancies got bigger, too, but most experienced users recognized the
differences and mentally reconciled the numbers. A MegaByte is K * K, or
1,024 * 1,024 = 1,048,576, not an even one million. So a 20 MB HD actually
held almost 21 million bytes - but there were always a few thousand bytes
lost to bad sectors and disk overhead, so 20 MB was "close enough". As disk
drive makers made even bigger drives, they passed the billion-byte capacity
mark. They began to use GB or GigaByte to refer to 1,000 MB, even though
many computer users pointed out that GB really means K * MB, or 1,024 MB or
1,073,741,824, and that a drive that holds 20 billion bytes and is probably
advertised as 20 GB, actually holds only about 18.626 GB (20,000,000,000 /
1,073,741,824). In most cases, referring to GB as a billion bytes is still
"close enough", but sometimes we have to be more precise.
In your case, your 1869 files use 12,062,061,174 BYTES, or almost 12 GB, not
12,062,061,174 GB. These 1869 files are in 237 folders. A folder (or Dir)
uses very little disk space, usually, since it is only an index to a group
of files.
Are you sure it said "GB34,103,296 free"? Or 34,103,296 BYTES free, which
would be about 34 MB, not GB - a thousand-fold difference. Your 34 MB of
free space is the amount of storage that is not currently in use. In other
words, you should be able to write nearly 34 MB more information to that
drive, which is about 1/30th of 1 GB. In today's world, 34 MB is not a lot
of free space; 34 GB should provide some elbow room.
I checked the computer management again and wanted to tell you that under
Volume, there are three rows. The first one just has a little disk-like
icon
and nothing after it, the next one has the same icon and has (C
after
it,
and the last one has the icon, and has HP_RECOVERY D: They all say the
Layout
is "Simple", the Type is "Basic" but the blank row is blank under File
System, while the (C
says NTFS AND THE HP_RECOVERY (D
says it is FAT32
File system.
Disk Management is one of the most useful utilities in Windows, in my
opinion. I've been using it often ever since it first appeared in Windows
2000. (It still irritates me that I can't set it to always start
full-screen and with the column headings adjusted to fit the data in them,
but those are minor quibbles.) The Help file here is chock-full of
information that every computer user needs to know, although it is organized
to be read like a reference, rather than a text, so we have to search for
the topics we want to learn about, rather than read a sequential
explanation. You can organize the default View to show you more about YOUR
computer if the default does not fit it. The default shows the Volume List
at the top and the Graphical View at the bottom; the divider between them
can be moved with your mouse, just like any other window. Both views show
almost the same information, but organized differently. The graphical view
also shows the physical disks, as well as the volumes (partitions and
logical drives) on each disk. The "Simple" and "Basic" labels are normal
for most users (including me). The File System should be NTFS (NT File
System) for all of Vista, except for any special volumes that HP uses. The
Capacity and Free Space columns should match what other utilities (such as
Explorer and Dir) are telling you.
In your case, my guess is that you have a single disk; the Graphical View
should show it as Disk 0, divided into 3 primary partitions (boxes with a
dark blue bar over the top of each). The Volume List would show the 3 lines
you describe, one for each of those partitions. The first one has no
letter, probably because it is part of HP's OEM (Original Equipment
Manufacturer) drive organization; typically you would never need to explore
this un-lettered and un-labeled partition. The second partition is your
Drive C: and is where all (or most) of the action should be in your
computer. This should hold your Windows Vista, plus all your applications
and all your data - all of the 12 GB of "stuff" that you found.
The Drive D: that you see is more of HP's system for organizing and
maintaining your computer; since I've never had an HP or worked on one very
much, I have no idea what is here. But some of the HP-aware readers here
should be able to interpret that for you. My guess is that you could delete
that whole partition and recover the space for your use - but my
understanding may be wrong; deleting the partition could make your computer
unusable. :>( So wait until you really know what that Drive D: is all
about before you delete it.
I've probably told you more than you want to know (or what you already
know), Barbara, but in a newsgroup (or Communities), we never know who may
be "reading over our shoulders" and might benefit from the fuller
explanation.
Study Disk Management and its Help file at length, and find some other
references, too. A good understanding of hard disks and their management
will not just help you solve your current problem, but will be an investment
that will pay dividends as long as you continue to use computers - which
just might be for the rest of your life!
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail in Vista Ultimate x64)
