HELP! Missing HD space

juno75

I heard of this prob before but for the life of me I cannot remember wot the solution is.Hope aint too much of a noob quesion:(

I got a Maxtor 40Gig IDE. I have configured it a few different ways in the last year or so- Multiple partitions/few multiboot setups on it etc. All in the name of experiamants:D

Some where along -the line I have lost 2.5GB- the Size of disk only shows up as 37.5GB.
I just use it now as a data storage disk with one large NTFS partition.
I write zeros when reconfigureing the drive.
I'm using windows 2000.

What are your thougts o wise and lernard bretheran??

SouperComputer

to make a long story short, formatting takes up space!

IBM did compensate for this with some of there drives I think.

juno75

eh?
I never heard that. So if i keep formatting someday I'll run outta space?
2.5 Gigs is a lot of formatting!!
Like i said I have already written zeros and that destroys all partitions/formatted areas.

echomadman

you are a victim of marketing
in marketing 1G= 1000Meg (in english)
to a computer 1G= 1024Meg

you loose 24 megs per gig and then some for formatting
The amount of times people have tried to return drives to me/companies i have worked for saying i gypped them is phenomenal

it has only really become an issue recently with larger drive sizes

look here for more info,
http://www.romulus2.com/articles/guides/misc/bitsbytes.shtml

woolymammoth

oddly enough, Micro$oft uses a different method for calculating disk space and file size than the drive manufacturers... thats why Maxtor says its 40gigs and M$ says its 37.5GB... or so i believe.

anybody's welcome to nuke me outta the water here with some facts.

woolymammoth

and thats what i meant when i said this....



don't mind me... i shush now!

juno75

yeah, I know my bits from my bytes and the whole marketing crap. But I 'm sure thats not it.
I am pretty certian that it woz showing as 40GB originally in windows.
If I loose disk space every time I format then how come it has stayed static at 37.5 for ages now?
I'm getting more confuddeled

BoB_BoT

yeap, that's what happens when you use windows. if you use fat32 or any other similar fat converter, you lose a few gigs. I have a 60gig hard drive as a secondary. My mainboard reads it as 60 gigs, but windows reads it at 55.9. I lost 4.1 gigs in the conversion. Its the price you pay for windows *shivers* and i thought we'd payed enough already for windows hehe

leeroybrown

40 Gb (Maxtor Style) = 40,000,000,000 bytes

Which is approx 37.25 Gb (OS/Software)

40 Gb (OS/Software) = 42,949,672,960 bytes

Strictly mathematically speaking a megabyte should _really_ be defined as 4 million bytes as is the normal convention with 'mega'. Similarly with Kilo, Giga, Tera (you wish you were so lucky), Peta, etc.

Top that off with the space taken for the partition tables, etc.

Then factor in the block size (32 kb for FAT32, 4kb for NTFS) and you're loosing more space for each file ...

echomadman

Originally posted by juno75
yeah, I know my bits from my bytes and the whole marketing crap. But I 'm sure thats not it.
I am pretty certian that it woz showing as 40GB originally in windows.
If I loose disk space every time I format then how come it has stayed static at 37.5 for ages now?
I'm getting more confuddeled

what cluster size are you using, ? this can also account for "missing" gigs, If you have a copy of partition magic or similar check your drive, if you resize your clusters you can reclaim a gig or two.

TBH whats a Gig or two between friends these days anyway

SouperComputer

TBH whats a Gig or two between friends these days anyway

LOL imagine saying that 10 years ago huh?

CombatCow

I got a western digital 120 Gig HDD 2 weeks ago and formatted it under NTFS in win2k and it recognised it as a 111 Gig HD.Win 2k stole my 9 Gig :rolleyes: o well .

COMBATCOW

Creamy Goodness

i've a IBM 120gig and it stole 5 precious gigs from me acutally tbh i couldn't be arsed

Spunog UIE

you only "lose" that space the first time. you will not lose any more. relax.

astrofool

bios updates also affect this (updated a dell recently and one of the updates was it recognising a gig as 1000*1000 instead of 1024*1024

SouperComputer

maybe but all windows OS from 98 up ignore BIOS and scan teh IDE bus directly.

juno75

Thanks chaps, sounds like you are all on the same jive so that must be it.
Oh well , least it's not just meself;)
pfttt, like the man said wots a gig or two there days,lol