VGN-FE31M

[topbannana]

I've just purchased this model and it comes with a 160gig HDD.

The reason i'm posting is that the HDD is partitioned into a C: and 😧 drive, with also a hidden partition.

I would like the HDD to be a single partition ( C: ).

To do this would i need to use the System Recovery Disc that i created when i first fired up this great machine, or would it be better to leave it as a C: and 😧 drive.

Could some great info please be posted about wether or not a single partition or two partition drive is the way to go and how i could make it a single partition if this is possible.

Reason being is i have about 80 gig of mp3's and because of the default 2 partition drive, the partitions are about 66 gig a piece. So my mp3's wont fit on 1 partition.

Thanks in advance.

[Blencogo]

Hi topbannana and welcome to Club Vaio.

The idea to have two drives C: and 😧 is that in the event of a system crash, you can reinstall your system drive C: without losing any of your data on drive D:. If you have one big drive, you will lose everything if you have to recover your system.

That said, if you back up your data to an external drive then this is not so important.

You can resize your partitions and choose to keep/delete the Recovery Partition by running the Vaio Recovery Utility - you can even delete 😧 altogether. You will of course lose everything installed since you bought the Vaio and have to set the Vaio up again.

If I were you, I would go out to the Newsagents and buy the current version (Issue 150) of PC Pro magazine. On the cover disc (in addition to lots of other useful stuff) is a full version of 'Paragon Partition Manager 8' which will allow you to change partition sizes without even rebooting. I would keep 😧 personally and resize C:\ to about 45GB and D:\ to about 100GB.

[paul_k]

According to the Paragon website, Partition Manager 8 is NOT compatible with Windows Vista.

[Blencogo]

Good point Paul - I should have mentioned that for anyone using Vista.

However, topbannana's FE31M comes with Windows XP MCE 2005.

[topbannana]

I also can't understand this also.

HDD is meant to be 160 gig.

The C: drive says total size 74.5 gig , free 61.1 gig.

The 😧 drive says total size 66.6 gig , free 66.6 gig.

So 74.5 + 66.6 = 141.1 gig , so wheres the other 19 gig gone.

Strange but true.

So this is why i wondered about a single partition.

[Thalamus.]

Hi topbannana

The difference in hard drive size is due to the different way manufactures and Microsoft report the sizes..

Manufacturers use the SI scale for example 1KB = 1000 bytes

Microsoft, ie windows XP, use the binary, for example 1KB = 1024 bytes

Therefore manufactures 160 GB hard drive = 160,000,000,000 bytes

Whereas MS 160 GB hard drive = 149 GB

example 160GB manufactures size converted to MS binary scale...

160Gb = 160,000,000,000

/1024 = 156250000 kilobytes
/1024 = 152588 megabytes
/1024 = 149 Gigabytes

Also you have a hidden recovery partition, which is probably 7.6 GB, which takes you down to 141.4GB..

I hope that makes sense..

[Blencogo]

This is for several known reasons:

Your hard drive is 160,000,000,000 bytes
Windows uses the bianary system of measurement 1GB = 1024KB so:
160,000,000,000 bytes is shown in Windows as:
=156250000KB
=152587.89063MB
=149.01161GB
You have a hidden Recovery Partiton of about 7GB to 12GB
The remaing few GB go into formatting and indexing the drive.

Removing the partitons will not make it any bigger !!!!!!!!!!



EDIT: Damn - you were quicker on the calculator than me this time Thalamus

Just found this http://www.personal-computer-tutor.com/abc3/v30/vic30.htm

[topbannana]

I understand it wont make it any bigger.

But i would like a bigger drive whether its 2 partitions or 1.

I guess Sony havnt got it wrong by default sizes, but if i make it 1 drive will i be doing the wrong thing then.

Or should i make C: smaller and 😧 bigger.

Cheers

[kee-lo_]

If you have Windows XP you could use Partition Magic, but beware it could go wrong and leave you loosing important data, so backup to DVD or external drive.

[Thalamus.]

Hi topbannana,

Have you thought about buying an external harddrive..?

You could use this to store your 80 gig of mp3's..