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flying2fast

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21 years ago

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flying2fast

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11131

November 6th, 2005 16:00

Unallocated space - confused?

Greetings!
 
I've just purchased a second-hand Dell Latitude D600 laptop with an Intel Pentium M chip, 1.6 GHz processor and 40GB hard drive.
 
When I access 'My computer', 'View System Information' it tells me that the C:/ drive only contains 10GB of memory.
 
On searching further it appears that 29GB of the hard disk memory is identified as 'UNALLOCATED'.
 
I've tried using the Windows XP help but am none the wiser.
 
Please can anyone advise on the following?
 
1.  Will this space automatically become 'allocated' as I fill up the laptop's memory with work?
 
2.  If not, can I somehow allocate this space for use?
 
3.  If so, how please?
 
4.  Or should I return the laptop as 'not as described'?
 
Thanks in advance for any computer wizzard who can provide answers.
 
Best regards from England, UK.
 
flying2fast
  • 1677

    0

    Posted November 15th, 2005 23:00

    Hello Flyingfast,

    "unallocated" space on a hard drive means that it is free to be used, the only problem is that you need to create a partition to use the space. To me it look slike the whole hard drive inthe machine is a total of 40Gb. Only 10Gb is actually in use now.  try using this link and it will walk you through how to create another drive "letter" witch can then be used for storage. Let me know how it works out and if you have any questions just ask.

    Dan..........

  • 1677

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    Posted November 23rd, 2005 00:00

    In Windows XP you can click the start menu, right click the My Computer, select Manage, then select Disk Management. This will show you what has been partitioned and what has not and allow you to partition the remaining 'UNALLOCATED' space into a single drive. Other wise you would need to purchase Partition Magic from a retailer and install it and have the primary partion on the hard drive extended to the full capacity of the drive. All of this would have to be done with Full Administration rights.
     
    MarineCorps97
  • 1677

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    Posted December 1st, 2005 18:00

    Can you send me explicit instructions on how to do this via the Device Manager in Windows?  I've tried creating new partitions using the unallocated space and I get errors no matter what type of partition I pick.  
     
    I also tried using 'diskpart' on the command line but also ran into problems.  Is there anything in bios or anything that needs to be set in order to format the unallocated space? 
     
  • snail720

    22 Posts

    1271

    0

    Posted November 27th, 2020 22:00

    If you cannot create a new partition on unallocated disk space, you need to check whether this disk is initialized to be MBR and has contained 4 primary partitions on it since MBR can only support 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions + 1 extended partition in which you can create many logical drives. If it is, you can convert MBR to GPT, which you can use some software so that you don't need to delete all existing partitions beforehand or convert one primary partition into logical drive.