Re: large drives

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CLIPER wrote:
i'm tired of searching existing threads about my problem here.
can't find direct answers to it..

I have a Seagate (SATA) 160Gb and just curious of the size in it.
It just recognizes a 149 Gb of space. About my OS, its Windows XP
w/ SP2 year released: 2002.

Just been searching for Winxdoes XP hotfixes in it and I can't find
one.

Is there any could explain further to this issue?

I'm curious what you searched for - as the answer is on the Internet in
droves for your 'problem'...?
('problem' is actually 'misunderstanding of marketing vs. reality' as you
will see...)

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
750GB --- 698.49 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: 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: 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)