I recently got an Acer Aspire notebook that has a 120 GB hard drive, but when I look under the computer tab that shows how much free space I have, it shows that there are 2 separate drives (one labelled “Acer” and the other “Data”) that only have 51 GB each.
Is the other 18 GB being used up by Vista and other preinstalled programs?
Also, what does RAM cost here? At the moment I’ve got 1 GB DDR2 installed, but can upgrade to make my computer faster. I found that buy.com is currently selling OCZ 4 GB RAM (2x@2GB) for just US $47, which is around 1400 NT: buy.com/prod/ocz-4gb-2-x-2gb … 87399.html
It sounds as though there is 18GB on the hard drive that has not been assigned to a partition. The number of mhz is how fast the data in the RAM can be accessed.
I’m in Taichung and would be happy to have a look at it if you like.
Sorry, don’t really get what you’re saying. I have to go in and assign it to a space? Why wouldn’t it automatically be assigned to the 2 original drives?
How would I go about checking and fixing it? Chances are whatever you say, I won’t be able to do it! But thanks for any advice!
It may be a hidden partition with a backup of your operating system. If that’s the case, then it can only really be accessed by the recovery CD and you shouldn’t really mess with it.
It’s a 120GB Drive (1 GB=1,000,000,000 bytes)
Windows says it’s a 104GB Drive (1 GB=1,073,741,824 bytes)
2 Different definitions of Gigabyte explains most of the difference. The second one should really be called a gibibyte (GiB), but it didn’t catch on.
Manufactures use the first definition to make their drives look bigger.
Also a hard disc looses some space for formatting information and metadata (such as filenames)
[quote=“djm409”]What’s the difference between 667 MHz and 800 MHz? There’s also 4 GB at 800 MHz available for about 2100 NT: buy.com/prod/ocz-4gb-2-x-2gb … 52493.html[/quote]
Relates to the bus on the motherboard of your laptop. Check the specifications of the exact model you bought and buy the RAM accordingly.
Ok, let’s see if we can simplify things here, as it seems like you’re not too clued in on all the technical mumbo jumbo.
irishstu is most likely correct, Acer and many other companies have a hidden recovery partition on the hard drive which allows you to restore the machine back to the factory defaults if something was to go wrong with the installation.
BFM is also correct in as much as hard drive sizes aren’t the same as the space that is usable for one or another reason. Why you have two drives is because the hard drive has been partitioned, or shared up into several parts, I don’t really like this, but it’s also done quite often and companies such as Dell charges extra for this “service”.
With regards to the memory, to make things easy, Google for CPU-Z and download it, run it and go to the tab labeled SPD, there’s a drop down box there that says Slot #1, if you have a Slot #2 that says anything but Empty when selected, then you have two 512MB modules installed and it means that you’d have to remove both of them before you can upgrade the memory beying 1.5GB. Otherwise you could just add a single 1GB module, as 2GB should be more than enough unless you do a lot of heavy image or video editing on your notebook.
Stick with DDR2 667MHz SO-DIMM’s, anything else would be a waste of money, as it’s unlikely that the chipset in your notebook supports anything faster unless it’s a brand new model with the PM45 or GM45 chipsets (again, CPU-Z will tell you this on the Mainboard tab). A 1GB 667MHz SO-DIMM goes for about NT$650 online shopping.pchome.com.tw/?mod=stor … _NO=AGAD11 but the 3C shops will most likely charge a couple of hundred NT more.
Computer stuff is in general a lot cheaper in the US, which really sucks as most of it is made in this part of the world, but for some reason the rest of the world seems to pay up for this stuff to be cheap in the US… and yes, I’m very annoyed about it…
The advertised space on a hard drive is always more than what you actually get. im not an expert but i think it has something to do with the shape of hard drive and that more data is stored as you move away from the center…
[quote=“dirtysouth4lyfe”]The advertised space on a hard drive is always more than what you actually get. I’m not an expert but I think it has something to do with the shape of hard drive and that more data is stored as you move away from the center…[/quote]Those are CDs, they have more data on the outside (larger circumference). Hard discs have the same amount of data on each track, so it is more closely packed in the centre. Or at least they used to.
