What is wrong with my HDD?

evoyear · 16 Dec 2009 at 21:51

After last time I reinstalled a clean version of Win 7, I noticed there is a slight problem with my system hard drive. It always show a extra 1 MB unallocated space? I can't do anything to it, I just can't use it.

there is no error, the disks works fine, but it just shown there is a extra 1MB space blank.
Anyone know what is wrong? My operating system or the hard drive it self? bad sectors?

Look careful at the end of this disk diagram. I am not asking for the 100MB system reserved disk.

thx for looking, and help me to solve this problem

evoyear · 17 Dec 2009 at 10:45

Anyone help please?

ChileanLlama · 17 Dec 2009 at 11:32

I don't think there's a problem at all...just that there's some unallocated space.

I wouldn't worry about it - you could always see if you can expand your D:\ partition to use the unallocated space.

evoyear · 17 Dec 2009 at 12:04

as I said, I can not expand to use it, it is unallocated and I can't do anything about it

ChileanLlama · 17 Dec 2009 at 12:22

You hadn't mentioned that you'd tried to expand - just that you couldn't do anything about it. So what else have you tried? 3rd party tools such as Disk Director, gparted etc? Have you tried deleting your D:\ partition and recreating it...

SMN · 17 Dec 2009 at 12:30

And this 1Mb is a problem because?...

evoyear · 17 Dec 2009 at 12:46

I tried delete the partition and create a new one on it, but always leave 1mb out.

I will try use some 3rd party tools you just suggested, disk director, see what can it do. thx for the replies

SMN said:
And this 1Mb is a problem because?...

because it is there out of my control, so I am concerned about the hard drive itself.

Simon42 · 17 Dec 2009 at 12:52

There is nothing wrong. It could be the way Windows 7 and Vista align partitions to optimise performance (and reduce wear on SSDs) or just other general alignment or size rounding.

So there's nothing to worry about - but using disk partitioning tools always carries a small risk so trying to fix it could give you a real problem instead

evoyear · 17 Dec 2009 at 13:13

But I installed the Win7 on a Blank hard drive, not a Vista one, so there should be no rounding problem right?
tried with disk manager, it did not say there is a unallocated space available.

Can I say is just a Win 7 bug that did not show my disk correctly? so there is no unallocated space, it shows there is one by accident?

SMN · 18 Dec 2009 at 13:42

because it is there out of my control, so I am concerned about the hard drive itself.

A lot of things the hard drive does is out of your control

This isnt a problem at all. If you like, format the system - recreate it using a smaller block size and reinstall your entire OS for the same 1024Kb. OR, ignore it.

evoyear · 18 Dec 2009 at 15:03

I have reinstalled my Win 7 twice, I will go for the third time with only one partition on it, I hope it will solve the problem. It is a pain :mad:

CaptainCrash · 18 Dec 2009 at 16:12

Windows *always* leaves a minimum of 1MB unallocated space at the end of a drive - this is reserved for the creation of data structures if you convert to dynamic disks (if you right-click on the drive in Disk Management's graphical view, then select Properties > Volumes, the amount of unallocated space is listed).

I'd guess this may be what you're seeing, although it's normally invisible in Disk Management, so I'm a bit puzzled as to why it should be showing up.

Is it a completely standard Windows 7 installation? (sorry if I'm barking up completely the wrong tree)...