Missing hard drive

[Tan]

Hi

I have an IBM Thinkpad X41 from work, and it is meant to have a 50GB hard drive.

It now shows that there is approximately 2.5GB left and I can only find approximately 17.5GB of data. Is it possible to have lost 30GB of storage space or is there files on the machine that I cant see.

Any ideas? I hae spoken to works support guys and all they can suggest is wipe the machine and reinstall everything.

Many thanks

Tan

 

[High-Lo]

If you do a Start, Run and type diskmgmt.msc - How is the disk partitioned?

 

[grober]

As suggested the disc may be partitioned. Other possibility is that it only has a 20Mb hard disc installed in the first place? Have a look at the bios settings on start up and see what the hard disk setting is showing.

 

[Sp!ke]

I don't think IBM made 2.5" 50Gb drives (or was it HGST by then?)

20, 40 and 60Gb IIRC.

 

[grober]

I don't think IBM made 2.5" 50Gb drives (or was it HGST by then?)

20, 40 and 60Gb IIRC.

Think you're right Spike. If all else fails whip out the hard drive caddy-usually only held in by a couple of screws and look at the Spec label on the drive unit itself. Be careful of static when you do this and don't force anything----- the disc caddy should slide in and out easily. Should be described in the owners manual somewhere.

 

[jpskiller]

there are 50gb laptop drives around mostly fujitsu's and I have seen a couple in IBM laptops over the years

 

[Tan]

If you do a Start, Run and type diskmgmt.msc - How is the disk partitioned?

There are two partitions;

51.74GB formatted as NTFS and is labelled IBM_PRELOAD,

the other is 4.14GB formated as FAT32 and is labelled IBM_SERVICE

 

[fredfloggle]

Right it has a backup partition for restoring the OS. Unfortunately these can get corrupted too.

Have a read of this...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=48612

 

[Soltan]

Hi

It now shows that there is approximately 2.5GB left and I can only find approximately 17.5GB of data. Is it possible to have lost 30GB of storage space or is there files on the machine that I cant see.

Many thanks

Tan

When you say you can "only find" 17.5GB of data what exactly do you mean? How are you looking for this data or where are you getting the figure from?

 

[fredfloggle]

I think our OP needs to right click on both the visible partitions in "my computer" and see what he actually has.

He has one of these I think.