How to avoid the extra 26 Gigabyte theft

I have a 100GB HDD in my Lenovo ! Before installing Windows 7, i am left with only 74 GB. Remind you, i still haven't installed windows yet ! After windows installation, i am left with a total of 62 GB. Why the thieving ? I believe it was for the system, but how do i avoid all the extra GB and save them for my use ? any suggestions ?

26gig does seem quite a steep amount for a small drive to loose on formatting... I would have expected formatted size of 74gig from a 80gig HD, maybe there is a 2nd partition with a system recovery on it?

BTW, the reason you loose on formatting is because nearly all hardware vendors sell hard drives based on the unformatted bytes available which always leads to this situation of missing lots of space after formatting, although installing Windows 7 normally steals a tiny 100mb for the system in addition to this "theft".

So, what are you suggesting ? I have clearly stated the facts that are available to me upon scrutinizing ! I need to recover all of the hidden partition space that is taken from me ! 26 GB(hidden) + 12GB (windows files) = too much space lost ! i started with 100 GB and ended up with 62 GB after installation !

well you would expect around 15-20gig for a typical install of windows 7, especially after all the windows updates and including the swap file. What you may need to do is run the "computer management" tool in admin tools section, have a look at the STORAGE tool within that, then disk management tool to reveal the true structure of way the drive is partitioned. Below is an example using my system, as you see it shows detailed information on how the space is divided up.

As you can see I lost about 69gig formatting and partitioning my 1TB primary HD and about 21gig on each of my 320gig Raided "games" HDs, this is perfectly normal. If your system is showing a RAW or unformatted partition amongst the list then its possible that's somehow been forgotten about or not reclaimed properly when the partition was formatted before install, that being the case you can do it from this tool page on a right click, but be warned dont delete the system or the installation partitions or you'll have to wipe and start over, in addition if the missing space is being used for a system backup then you'll need that in the future to restore to factory defaults assuming it's a windows 7 backup, if it's for an old OS your no longer using then it's okay to format and use provided you never want it again.

I checked for Recovery partitions on my HDD, but i don't see any ! And, i believe my laptop came with Win XP from factory ! However, i am now running Win 7 amd any old OS is obsolete. I just want to recover all the lost space and reclaim my HDD ! I did a fresh install last night, (I reformatted all partitions on HDD), and now i want to reinstall windows again if i can get help with reclaiming the extra 26 GB !

The way manufactures specify hard drives is in decimal units while the system (computer) uses and sees the drive in binary units. Therefore a 1TB drive (decimal) is roughly 931GB
binary. See the link below

A new 100GB drive will show total, 93.1GB in the computer.
Did you completely wipe the drive before attempting to install Windows?
Are you replacing the factory installed operating system?
Is there a hidden Restore partition from the old operating system?

My drive displays a smaller than expected capacity than the indicated size on the drive label

I suspect you have run an upgrade install and you have a full copy of your old system stored in an old folder. It is also likely that more unwanted baggage has been left on your system from an upgrade install. I would expect that you will also have a recovery partition there which you should take care of. If you want to remove it first make sure that you have burned yourself some recovery dvd's from this partition (you should do this anyway). You should also make a second copy of those disks. I would then reformat the hard hard drive and run a completely clean install.

I thought i might of missed something yesterday after the clean install, so i reinstalled today again ! I inserted the Win 7 CD, when prompted "Where i want to install Windows, i reformatted all the drives (total of 2) and i installed on the smaller partition ! I have a partition that is 25 Gb and a partition that is 50 GB. I managed to reformat both partitions, and i also seen the other hidden partion of (100MB) system reserved ! However, i don't know where the other 225-26 GB are . Can someone give me clear instructions on how to find them ?

I think i have an idea about where the other 26 GB's are. However , i still need help getting them back ! I just realized that i aborted a couple of previous windows installations. I am led to believe,,,,there are created files/partitions with these old attempts ! basically speaking, i think i have a couple of windows.old folders that need to be deleted ! Now, i need help finding those folders/files so i can delete them ! Any advise ?

Get a free copy of easeus partition manager free from here:

EASEUS FREE Partition Manager Software: Free Partition Magic alternative for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 and Server 2000/2003/2008 Hard Drive partitions.

It will allow you to see and manage all the partitions on your drive. But do check to see if you have a recovery partition amongst them and get you recovery disks burned before you remove it.