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Tried to install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7. I formatted my hard drive a couple of times to make both the OSs work together. But now when I tried to format the whole 500 GB hard drive to install windows 7, Its showing the total space of my hard drive as only 465 GB. The rest of the 35 GB is not visible even after deleting all the partitions and then making the whole volume unallocated and then re-partitioning using windows 7 live USB.

I even tried to partition using the GPart in Ubuntu 13.04 live USB but the hard drive space is still visible as 465 GB. I also tried to fix the boot with with the boot repair. It still didn't work.

I had tried to install Ubuntu 12.10 in one of many formatting procedures and had installed it alongside windows and both worked well together and the space allocated to it was around 34 GB. I was able to run it from the grub bootloader but i was unable to see the space allocated for that in the windows hard drive partitioner.

My strong assumption is that, the 35 GB which is invisible has Ubuntu installed in it. I formatted the whole drive and then tried to start the computer again, and then the grub rescue came up. I tried the boot repair but the procedure was completed without making any changes.

I would appreciate all the help i can get to retrieve my lost hard disk space do that i can install windows 7 alone.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

The computer industry has historically used the units kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte, and the corresponding symbols KB, MB, and GB, in at least two slightly different measurement systems. In citations of main memory (RAM) capacity, gigabyte customarily means 1073741824bytes. As this is the third power of 1024, and 1024 is a power of 2 (210), this usage is therefore referred to as a binary prefix.

In most other contexts, the industry uses the multipliers kilo, mega, giga, etc., in a manner consistent with their meaning in the International System of Units (SI), namely as powers of 1000. For example, a 500gigabyte hard disk holds 500000000000bytes, and a 100megabit per second Ethernet connection transfers data at 100000000bit/s. In contrast with the binary prefix usage, this use is described as a decimal prefix, as 1000 is a power of 10.

500000000000 B / 1073741824 = 465 GiB

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  • Well, it used to show more than 490 gb for sure before i tried to install ubuntu. I formatted the whole hard drive and installed windows by partitioning it into 100, 180, 184 although before i was able to make it 100, 198, 198. I still cant understand where the other 35 gb is.
    – saish rajakrishnan
    May 12, 2013 at 15:16
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Try installing Gparted and see what used the gigabytes.

Probably it's an extra partition used by Ubuntu. e.g. a swap-partition.

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  • Even using Gparted i formatted my drive. the first few times i formatted my drive using Gparted, it showed my hard drive space as 500.1 gb and then again when i tried to format it after installing both windows 7 and ubuntu 13.04 it started showing 465gb as my total hard drive space. Please help.
    – saish rajakrishnan
    May 12, 2013 at 15:23

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