Mystery Partition In My Computer Doesn ' t Show Up In Disk Management

rawmess · 11 Nov 2013

i recently got an used hp envy 14 currently running x64 home premium . since it ' s limiited edition , i dont know the full specs . i was told the HDD was over 700 GB [ 720 or 750 ? ] . when i added up the total space , it was not over 600 GB usable . now i ' m seeing a partition in computer with label Q: which i cannot open displaying " Q: is not accessible access is denied " .

- the " hide empty drives " option is checked in folder options .
- the disk management doesn ' t show the drive
- when i try to change the letter of any drive , Q : is not available .

is it possible that this drive is eating up some space ? or is 600 / 610 [ unsure

] GB max usable in the hard drive ? need to perform a clean install of win 7 ultimate . so i dont want the space to be waste or perform a format again to just get the space back . dont want to see the same problem in ultimate . so , please help me out here . thanks in advance :)

marsmimar · 11 Nov 2013

Hello rawmess and welcome to Seven Forums.

My usual disclaimer: I'm not an expert at anything. :)

According to your second screenshot, Disk 0 is 596.17GB. That should be the total amount of space on the disk. I'm guessing that HP installed a "620GB" hard drive. That would be based on the manufacturer using a decimal rating system where 1000KB = 1MB and 1000MB = 1GB. But in computer speak (or the binary system that computers use) it actually takes 1024KB to equal 1MB and 1024MB to equal 1GB. So if you keep dividing 620GB (620,000,000,000 bytes) by 1024 (you have to divide 3 times) you will eventually get around 596GB.

As to the mystery Q: drive, since it doesn't show up in Disk Management I'm thinking that perhaps it was a removable drive (external hard drive, flash drive) and the previous owner gave it the letter Q. Here's a couple of previous Forum threads that may offer some help.

https://www.sevenforums.com/general-d...ss-delete.html

Mystery Drive (Q:)

Hope some of this helps.

rvcjew · 12 Nov 2013

if you have office pre-installed it is where it keeps its preload data and is normal. do you have office starter or anything like that installed or in your programs and features list of installed programs? Also it looks like you have a 650GB hdd not 750.
microsoft office click to run protected (Q) drive, unable to - Microsoft Community

rawmess · 12 Nov 2013

marsmimar said:

Hello rawmess and welcome to Seven Forums.

My usual disclaimer: I'm not an expert at anything. :)

According to your second screenshot, Disk 0 is 596.17GB. That should be the total amount of space on the disk. I'm guessing that HP installed a "620GB" hard drive. That would be based on the manufacturer using a decimal rating system where 1000KB = 1MB and 1000MB = 1GB. But in computer speak (or the binary system that computers use) it actually takes 1024KB to equal 1MB and 1024MB to equal 1GB. So if you keep dividing 620GB (620,000,000,000 bytes) by 1024 (you have to divide 3 times) you will eventually get around 596GB.

As to the mystery Q: drive, since it doesn't show up in Disk Management I'm thinking that perhaps it was a removable drive (external hard drive, flash drive) and the previous owner gave it the letter Q. Here's a couple of previous Forum threads that may offer some help.

https://www.sevenforums.com/general-d...ss-delete.html

Mystery Drive (Q:)

Hope some of this helps.

thanks a lot for your details and links , the drive is nowhere now . i uninstalled microsoft office ( pre - installed ) and an app ( with " virtualiser " in it ) as suggested in the links and it was gone after a restart . btw , can i use the 596 GB as external storage , m not sure abt its size in inches ? and one last ques , can i use any brand ' s internal laptop drive ( 1 TB ) on my laptop ( i7 , 6GB RAM ) or should it be one from HP ? thanks . i ' ll mark the post as solved after the reply :)

marsmimar · 12 Nov 2013

rawmess said:

thanks a lot for your details and links , the drive is nowhere now . i uninstalled microsoft office ( pre - installed ) and an app ( with " virtualiser " in it ) as suggested in the links and it was gone after a restart . btw , can i use the 596 GB as external storage , m not sure abt its size in inches ? and one last ques , can i use any brand ' s internal laptop drive ( 1 TB ) on my laptop ( i7 , 6GB RAM ) or should it be one from HP ? thanks . i ' ll mark the post as solved after the reply :)

Yes, you could use the existing hard drive as an external drive and replace it with a larger drive. Most laptops use a 2.5 inch drive so you could use almost any name brand drive from Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, etc. Retailers should always offer customer support so you can find out if a particular replacement hard drive will be compatible with your specific laptop. Then you'd most likely also want to get an enclosure or docking station for the old drive.

Sample Enclosures

Sample Docking Stations

rawmess · 12 Nov 2013

it feels a lil bad to know i was " cheated " in the hard disk specs . anyways , i ' ll move on with a TB . thanks again

marsmimar · 12 Nov 2013

You're very welcome. :)