Where's My Hdd?!

new laptop; guy who gave it to me claims there is a 1TB drive, plus a smaller, boot-only one. i have heard of such arrangements but have no personal experience.

"this PC" shows "C: 62G avail of 118G" and "D: BD-ROM DRIVE". clicking on the latter says "insert disc". so where's the main one?!

i looked in the dev mgr, but it just confuses me. "disk drives" there lists 2 items, with "properties" all about BUSSES and DRIVERS. where do i find...um...SIZE?!

i am also curious to see how much RAM i have, but that is not clear there either! seems to me it was under "memory" on prior PCs.

for that matter, how do i see my CONNECTION SPEED? right click and/or hover on the actual connection used to display it on prior PCs; deep inside "properties" i find "2.4GHz band" and "144 linkspeed" (up/down both) -- izzat what i'm looking for? that's NOMINAL, right? no way to see the ACTUAL speed happening at any given moment?

dell XPS-L521X with win10, i believe (not certain until i sort out this control panel and device manager confusion!)

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ok, i found sysinfo, which clarifies most of those, but for that BD-ROM drive it says "698.64 GB". huh? why is there a size on an EMPTY DRIVE waiting for media??

when i google about it, i find a lot of discussion about it being a "virtual drive" needing to be "deleted". huh? is this some queueing space for CLOUD STORAGE or something? NOT the actual "DVD drive" (my words) i'm seeing on the side of the PC? (again, why does an EMPTY DRIVE show a SIZE?)

still no signs of a 1TB drive, much less the DEFAULT ONE on my system!! am i grossly misreading things here before i go accusing the guy of FORGETTING it?!

 

What do you mean by "new" laptop? Just new to you or perhaps still under warranty?

Forget the BD-ROM. That is a Blue-ray disk drive (may be seen as a DVD drive). That said, I would press the eject button to make sure no disk is in there. Don't worry about virtual or cloud storage. They are not important - now.

Your C: showing 62GB of 118GB is your hard drive. Since it only says 118GB, that suggests the drive has been partitioned (divided) into smaller sections or partitions - and should be seen as separate drive letters.

Sadly, you didn't tell us what version of Windows. You need to go into Computer Management > Disk Management and see what it says there for your drives.

 

win10. i said that.

it's a free hand-me-down from a busy tech guy. if drive is missing, he will fix/replace it, not a problem. but when i sheepishly asked if this was a possibility, he snapped "the 128G is the *boot* drive -- get into the main drive instead!" so i wanna be 100% certain i definitely DON'T HAVE ONE (or it's not "hidden" or something) before accusing him of something so basic!

i dunno about any "partitioning". 62G of 118G avail is b/c WINDOWS is occupying the other 56. not hidden, not partitioned; THAT is the drive i am defaulted to when reading or writing files. no problems there.

it's just this mystery "1TB" drive which he insists is also in there somewhere....

 

Sorry, missed that win10.

That's what looking in Disk Management will show.

 

ok, i'm not exactly understanding what i'm seeing there.

up top i have the 118G "C: boot, page file, crash dump, primary partition" plus a 580M "disk 1 partition 2 -- recovery partition" and 99M "system reserved -- system, active, primary partition".

down bottom i have:

"disk 0 698.64G" with 99M of it holding the above (system, active, primary partition) and 698.54G "unallocated".

and

"disk 1" divided between the other 2 -- "118G page file, crash dump, primary partition" and "580M recovery partition".

(also CD-ROM 0 -- which i shall ignore)

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so do i actually HAVE 699G of space somewhere on some "unallocated" drive?! fact that the number matches the "BD-ROM" of before is perplexing.

700G plus that 118 still doesn't make "1TB", but are u suggesting that as a starting point? that my claim of it being "1TB + separate 128G boot drive" was a misunderstanding; that's it's really PART of the same (physical) drive, i.e. 1TB with 128G partitioned off, for a remainder of 872G as "mine"?

872G or 699G, it doesn't matter. if i have EITHER amount at my avail, i will content myself with that. just clarify what i need to do to "allocate" or even SEE that 699G somehow....

tx

 

pls ignore the above! i didn't realize there was a time limit on editing (5 mins? seriously?!) and had totally reworked the second section!!

take 2:


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so do i actually HAVE 699G of space somewhere on some "unallocated" drive?! fact that the number matches the "BD-ROM" of before is suspicious.

and why the discrepancy of 1TB vs 699G, if indeed he was correct about such drive being there??

either way, pls tell me how to "allocate" or even SEE it -- 1TB or 699G, it doesn't matter. at present i can't get beyond the 62G avail on the "boot" drive!

tx

 

anything further? i am at a dead end here!

if i have a 1TB drive somewhere how do i get it to show, let alone access it?!

is it the case (maybe?) that this tech guy, being a tech guy, accidentally left it to boot into this boot-only drive/"partition"(?) b/c he was working there, and forgot to switch it back to the ACTUAL drive/partition that john q user (me) would be needing?

something to be switched/preempted during startup? change "boot order" or something?

i have already burned up the 62G it gave me. 48 hours on a new PC and i'm out of space!!

 

You just need to right click the 699Gb and create simple volume. At present it's just unused disk space.

 

sorry, this is so very new to me -- a little more details before i eff it up pls. create simple volume will do what, exactly? cause it to appear as a new DRIVE LETTER ("E:" or w/e) under explorer?

and what is 699G to begin with? i am still baffled over the discrepancy between guy claiming there's a 1TB drive and disk management showing me 699G. i mean, does 699G (or 720 or anything close) even EXIST as a physical drive? are we still talking VIRTUAL disk or something, such that it is the sum of a 512G and a 256G?

plus, i am still *trying* to ignore the BD-ROM there, but how is that that is coincidentally the EXACT SAME SIZE (698.64 G) that we're talking about?! a number like that doesn't just come out of thin air!

sorry, i don't think i'm a total luddite, but guy hands me a PC and says it "has" a 1TB drive, i don't expect it to be invisible, hidden, unallocated, or otherwise needing to be "created". is this really something a home user should be attempting?

 

sorry -- update on the above. i have come to understand the situation a bit better. (if this board would let you EDIT ONE'S POSTS, i could clear out 90% of the last one! )

i do indeed have a seagate 750G drive. i dunno why the guy is saying 1TB, or whether he'll be willing to swap back to one if i ask (since whole thing was a freebie to begin with). but i DO have my own 1TB drive, chock full of stuff, on my OLD laptop. i was actually gearing up to transfer all the contents over to THIS one as soon as things settled -- can i just PHYSICALLY DROP IT IN instead?

(as in, are all HDDs interchangeable?)

normally i'd hesitate b/c i don't understand the basic format/allocate/setup procedures, but as the above indicates, i may be stuck doing that on my own anyways. in whch case, start with the LARGER disk, no?

or is "allocate" like "format" in the sense that i will wipe the drive during setup? i don't REALLY care whether it's 750 or 1TB going forward, but i care tremendously about not losing the 900G of actual FILES i have on my old drive!

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the alternative is to point out to him that things aren't set up correctly (can't even access drive!), and "oh, by the way, it's a smaller one than you said". might be a bit more tactful than asking for the bigger drive as the main focus.

 

Yes, exactly that

It's the 698.54Gb unallocated in Disk Management