The incredible strinking SSD

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afe66

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#139402 7-Feb-2014 18:16

Friend had laptop with 128 gb ssd in it. (Acer I think) windows 7

Had to return the laptop to the national distributor because of a fault which was not fixable so the laptop was replaced. He asked that they send back the original SSD as it had data on it he wanted . (Also backed up but he wanted the original SSD back.) which they did after much procrastinating.

So last week he put the drive in an enclosure but found it was formatted... And then if he added up the partitions they only came to 59gb. He asked me this afternoon where is the extra space gone.

I'm a cynic.

I think they formatted a 64 Gb drive instead and sent it hoping he won't notice... ( add a W7 recovery partition to 59 Gb gets close to 64gb)

A.

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#982043 7-Feb-2014 18:22

My Samsung laptop has a 128Gb drive, of which only about 60 is usable. The recovery partitions are HUGE!

Annoyingly they don't provide OS install media anymore either so you can't just format it and re-install as the key is embedded too.

Behodar

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#982045 7-Feb-2014 18:25

What does the label on the drive say, and does it show signs of tampering? Does the model number in Device Manager match the one on the label?

freitasm

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#982046 7-Feb-2014 18:27

Had you asked your friend to open the Computer Management app to see which partitions are available in that SSD?

gzt

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#982047 7-Feb-2014 18:30

afe66: So last week he put the drive in an enclosure but found it was formatted... And then if he added up the partitions they only came to 59gb. He asked me this afternoon where is the extra space gone.

It does seem out of place but maybe he is only counting mounted partitions. Get him to have a look at the disk layout in Windows Disk Management.

hio77

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#982052 7-Feb-2014 18:38

insane: My Samsung laptop has a 128Gb drive, of which only about 60 is usable. The recovery partitions are HUGE!

Annoyingly they don't provide OS install media anymore either so you can't just format it and re-install as the key is embedded too.

thats a huge recovery!

kinda offtopic, but lesson learnt with recovery partitions... gotta find a better way of storing it.

i had a rather frustrating case last week with recovery partitions, GF got excited, had just finished baking and didnt notice her slippery hands.. laptop went bouncing down the hallway after a substantial drop (while it was going to sleep might i add..).

luckily, most of the data itself was intact (although backups were also on the fileserver, but wasnt fully sure if files had been synchronized recently.) but the recovery partition took a huge hit. making it unrecoverable - spent many hours trying to use dd to copy off the 1.9 and 9.2GB recovery partitions.

unfortunately, the windows key was smudged off. ended up reinstalling windows, then plucking the key from the bios. unfortunately, it didnt want to go with any of my keys (i dont have the correct OEM disks handy, and apparently "obtaining" windows 7 OEMs at this point is pushing it a little)

so in the end of it, screen was fine thankfully, a install of windows 7 ultimate was done using a key i had handy` and gf learnt dropping laptops is as serious as i make it out to be. would have perfered to use its own key but without grovelling for a install cd and waiting for it to arrive, i have no show of doing that.

this left me asking myself, in the case of a disk crash, arent recovery partitions a b!tch.

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

afe66

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#982131 7-Feb-2014 22:56

Thanks for your thoughts which I will pass onto him.
Maybe I am a little too cynical.
I suggest ed looking at the bare board for model numbers or similar to Google.

A.

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#982148 8-Feb-2014 00:54

Why doesnt he reformat it into 119gb?

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gzt

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#982215 8-Feb-2014 10:58

It's not a good idea to reformat anything until you understand the structure, the reasons for it, and if the data you want is present on the disk.