Where Your Free HDD Space Went on a Toshiba Qosmio Laptop
After purchasing my Toshiba Qosmio laptop, I noticed that only about 450GB of the stated 500GB of storage was available. A few hours after unboxing it, I discovered two large hidden partitions had been created by Toshiba. The first one is about 1GB, which seems to be the standard Windows 7 recovery partition, but it’s noticeably larger. The second partition is even bigger—around 10.3GB—and contains recovery tools, including Windows setup files, drivers, and more.
If you’re wondering, the second partition can be safely deleted. The recovery tool offered by Toshiba is essentially useless; instead of recovering data, it will wipe your drive and reinstall Windows. So, if you have important files on your drive, DO NOT use Toshiba’s recovery utility.
Here’s how you can clean things up:
- Open the Disk Management utility:
- Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management.
- You’ll see the partitions listed.
- Delete the second partition (not the first one!) and expand the previous one to fill the free space.
This should free up a lot of space on your laptop without affecting your system’s functionality.
Thanks!
Just did that