HP Pavilion Laptop 500GB SSD Drive w/ only 237GB max space available?

[jgk381]

My HP Pavilion laptop supposedly came with a 500GB SSD drive when I bought it around 2021-22, but I'm now running low on disk space and when I went to check my storage it says I've used 232GB of the available 237GB space on the drive.

So what happened to the other 263GB of 500GB it was supposed to have when I bought it?

I know that the OS/system files uses some of it, but does that really use >250GB? And would that show up on my Storage Usage settings page if it did?

Because my Storage Usage says only ~32GB are being used for "System & Reserved" and doesn't show anything about how much Windows 11 is occupying, so when I add up all of the storage used from all the categories listed it only adds up to 232GB. 

I'm wondering did I get scammed and the laptop only had 237GB to begin with, or is it using the other 263GB of space to run Windows 11 and just isn't visible on the storage usage page, or is there something wrong with my laptop that I can fix to access the other 263GB?

Also, another thing I noticed is it says I have 26GB of apps installed, but when I add up the size of every app, it only adds up to ~780MB. Which makes me think there's something wrong with my laptop.

Thank you

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Enter the product number of your notebook in the search window at the link below and it will give you the parts list which should indicate the drive capacity of the SSD that HP installed.

HP PartSurfer

To find the product number for your PC, click on the search icon on your Windows taskbar.

Type: System Information

The System information app should show up.

Run the app and the product number of your PC will be found on the System SKU line about 1/4 of the way down on the report.