Re: hdd

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Thank you for your replies ...... very helpful table Shenan.

Its nice to be back with wonderful people and msnews groups after a technical glitch on my side. I am now able to post and read replies.

PS
Who was it who said a man can live without a computer and a woman ? Must be a boring life if that was true !!!


"Shenan Stanley" <newshelper@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:%23eGvRIXSGHA.2536@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hash wrote:
I've installed a 320Gb hdd (it says on the case). The xp sp2 home
reads only 298Gb as total size.

Wheres the rest gone ? Thank you.

Just for future reference:

Advertised --- Actual Capacity
10GB --- 9.31 GB
20GB --- 18.63 GB
30GB --- 27.94 GB
40GB --- 37.25 GB
60GB --- 55.88 GB
80GB --- 74.51 GB
100GB --- 93.13 GB
120GB --- 111.76 GB
160GB --- 149.01 GB
180GB --- 167.64 GB
200GB --- 186.26 GB
250GB --- 232.83 GB
320GB --- 298.02 GB
400GB --- 372.53 GB
500GB --- 465.66 GB

The actual formatted and usable storage area is often less than what is
advertised on the boxes of today's hard disks. It's not that the
manufactures are outright lying, instead they are taking advantage of the
fact that there's no standard set for how to describe a drives storage
capacity.

This results from a definitional difference among the terms kilobyte (K),
megabyte (MB), and gigabyte (GB). In short, here we use the base-two
definition favored by most of the computer industry and used within Windows
itself, whereas hard drive vendors favor the base-10 definitions. With the
base-two definition, a kilobyte equals 1,024 (210) bytes; a megabyte totals
1,048,576 (220) bytes, or 1,024 kilobytes; and a gigabyte equals
1,073,741,824 (230) bytes, or 1,024 megabytes. With the base-10 definition
used by storage companies, a kilobyte equals 1,000 bytes, a megabyte equals
1,000,000 bytes, and a gigabyte equals 1,000,000,000 bytes.

Put another way, to a hard drive manufacturer, a drive that holds 6,400,000
bytes of data holds 6.4GB; to software that uses the base-two definition,
the same drive holds 6GB of data, or 6,104MB.

So, be prepared when you format that new 320GB drive and find only 298GB of
usable storage space. Isn't marketing wonderful?

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Relevant Pages

  • Re: large drives
    ... The actual formatted and usable storage area is often less than what is ... fact that there's no standard set for how to describe a drives storage ... base-two definition, a kilobyte equals 1,024 bytes; ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: hdd
    ... The actual formatted and usable storage area is often less than what is ... fact that there's no standard set for how to describe a drives storage ... base-two definition, a kilobyte equals 1,024 bytes; ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: 160 GB HDD Issues
    ... This question seems to come up more with 160GB drives than any other. ... The actual formatted and usable storage area is often less than what is ... base-two definition, a kilobyte equals 1,024 bytes; ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: recently bought a new 320gig hard drive but it seems to only have 300gig ?!
    ... The actual formatted and usable storage area is often less than ... describe a drives storage capacity. ... With the base-two definition, a kilobyte equals 1,024 bytes; ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: recently bought a new 320gig hard drive but it seems to only have 300gig ?!
    ... The actual formatted and usable storage area is often less than ... describe a drives storage capacity. ... With the base-two definition, a kilobyte equals 1,024 bytes; ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)