Can't Access Complete Hard Drive

[iaresean]

Hi all;

I noticed this problem with my friends hard drive as well as my own. After fdisk'ing and format'ing the new hard drives, mine being an 80g hard drive, I logged into windows and saw that the hard drive has a max capacity of 74,5g only and not 80g. On my friends it showed 37g (or somewhere around there) and not 40g max capacity. Why can't we have access to the full hard drive? Is there a secret/backup partition that windows creates for emergency's or special use?

Thank you for all your help;

Sean.

 

[edfair]

Because the operating system formats it like it needs it for use, not the raw capacity advertised.
And your reporting may differ in the way the size is reported, 1K as 1000 or 1024.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[IslandCustom]

Drive manufacturers have a way of exaggerating drive sizes by using GB. In My Computer, right click your drive and select Properties. You'll see that the size of the drive in gigabytes does not match the size of the drive in bytes. The bytes figure is larger because a gigabyte is equal to 1,024,000 bytes. Plus, some space is required on the drive for overhead (file allocation table, for example). You'll never see the full drive size.

 

[iaresean]

Thanks guys;

I should have realised that myself. Very misleading of them to advertise the capacity like that.


Sean.

 

[edfair]

Islandcustom,
1024 by 1024.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[IslandCustom]

edfair, if a meg is 1,024 bytes, then a gig is 1,024,000 bytes. Or is my math flawed?

 

[wolluf]

kilobyte = 1024 bytes
megabyte = 1,048,576 bytes (1024*1024)
gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bytes (1024*1024*1024)

drive manufacturer's gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes

I've also seen it defined as 1,048,576,000 and 1,024,000,000 bytes.