120GB HDD Reported as 111GB by WinXP?

[ElijahBaley]

Hi

I have partioned and formatted a 120GB Seagate Barricuda HDD using Seagate's DiscWizard utility, however when I view the properties of the drive in Windows Explorer it shows as only 111GB.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks for any help,

EB

 

[SESaskDFC]

Howdy:

One GB is actually equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes NOT 1,000,000,00. So, do the math: 111 x 1073741824 and you will get up to your 120GB harddrive.

Murray

 

[franklin97355]

As SESaskDFC says computer sales departments count in 1000's where the rest of us count in 1024's.

 

[cdogg]

Manufacturers are misleading when labeling their hard drives. They are actually using "gibibytes" instead of gigabytes. A gibibyte is a non-Windows term used to describe 1000MB. Windows on the other hand relies on the technicality that bytes use multiples of 1024:

1024bytes in 1KB
1024KB in 1MB
1024MB in 1GB
.
.
.
etc

It of course benefits the manufacturer to state gibibytes instead of actual gigabytes - play on numbers.


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[ElijahBaley]

Thanks for your comments guy's,

do any manufacturers still sell in pounds, shillings and pence? ie 1GB = 1024MB

EB

 

[KIDA1973]

Ah, the power of powers of two...

Everything in its right place...

 

[rockerfellerz]

Some of the drive space is used up by the format to create the filesystem as well....

If you're going through Hell...keep going... (Winston Churchill)
RocKeRFelLerZ

 

[ceh4702]

Manufacturers of Hard Drives often use 1000 instead of 1024 when they descrive what a MB or a GB is. Usually if you read the information from the drive manufacturer they will have a disclaimer that states this.

Also on a drive this large the file system may use quite a bit of storage space for administrative and addressing information that the drive has to store. NTFS has a table in the front, one in the middle and one in the rear of the drive.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.