Unalocated Disk Space

[JamesJ]

I have a 160mb internal hard drive with 1 partition (ntfs). Vista sp2.
When viewing drive info 3rd party software is showing the used space and
also 10mb of unallocated space.
Anyone know what this unallocated space is?

Thanks,
James

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi JamesJ,

It's a leftover bit from aligning the partition, quite normal.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
Vote for my shoe: http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[JamesJ]

Thanks.

Hi JamesJ,

It's a leftover bit from aligning the partition, quite normal.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
Vote for my shoe: http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Curious]

I thought the space might be the space reserved by the OS for restore
points.

 

[Richard Urban]

10 meg?

Not good for restoring much of anything these days. <grin>

 

[JamesJ]

What is the default size Vista allocates for restore points? I haven't
changed
it, I don't even know how to find out.

James

 

[Bill Daggett]

I thought the space might be the space reserved by the OS for restore
points.

You guessed. There wasn't much "thought" involved.

 

[Bill Daggett]

What is the default size Vista allocates for restore points? I haven't
changed it, I don't even know how to find out.

Roughly 15% of the drive. Read this for making adjustments:

http://www.petri.co.il/change_amount_of_disk_space_used_by_system_restore_in_vista.htm

 

[JamesJ]

I don't plan on making adjustmnents. I was comparing that with the 10mb
non-allocated space on my drive

James

 

[Bill Daggett]

I don't plan on making adjustmnents. I was comparing that with the 10mb
non-allocated space on my drive

You have had an answer about that already: it's not that.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Curious.

No. That "unallocated space" is OUTSIDE any partition, so it's outside the
NTFS file system and not accessible by Windows at all - except by Disk
Management or another such utility capable of creating another partition.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

 

[JamesJ]

Ok

You have had an answer about that already: it's not that.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I thought the space might be the space reserved by the OS for restore
points.

10GB maybe, but not 10MB.

 

[Curious]

I interpreted the OP's post to mean that the had a 160GB HDD with 10GB
unallocated and not a 160MB HDD with 10MB unallocated
Also I have always been under the impression that the space for reserved
restore points did not show up as allocated on a HDD partition.
Also I have never heard of "Aligning Partitions" before nor could I find
any information about it using Bing

 

[JamesJ]

I haven't heard of it either.
A partition manager is reporting my drive's capacity as 149GB with 9MB
unallocated.
I'm trying to find a way to allocate ALL the drive space.

James

 

[Tom Ferguson]

Proper partition alignment is important for good disk performance. It is not
usually an issue when partitions are created on a clean disk. However, there
are circumstances under which it can be an issue. E.G., if a partition is
converted from FAT to NTFS, and depending on the parameters chosen, a
partition is created which crosses a boundary. The result is that a file
might be allocated storage on space that is divided by the boundary. The
result is an increase in the overhead for each read or write operation.

Also, proper choices are important when creating data structures on
solid-state disks.

This is probably not the place for a an extended, deep discussion of
underlying concepts and methods. So let me refer you to something to give
you a taste of one dimension of the topic

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48309

Tom Ferguson

 

[Curious]

Very interesting, however, I found nothing in the links to indicate that not
using Partition boundaries could consume 10GB of disk space on a 160GB disk
with either XP or Vista and it appears that with a newly formatted NTFS disk
in Win7 and also possibly in Vista would have a problem.
I did learn that starting a partition not on a boundary could cause
performance problems in XP and also possibly in Vsita.

 

[Tom Ferguson]

I am not surprised. I neither intended to nor did I address that. If I had,
I would have threaded to the OP. My only interest was, "Also I have never
heard of "Aligning Partitions" before nor could I find any information
about it using Bing".

Sorry to have caused you any confusion.

Tom Ferguson.

 

[Bill Daggett]

Also I have always been under the impression that the space for reserved
restore points did not show up as allocated on a HDD partition.

Wrong impression to be under.

 

[Richard Urban]

You keep saying 10 GB. The O/P is talking about 10 MB

I see drives every day on which there are 7-10 MB of unallocated space at
the beginning of a partitioned drive.