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Full capacity not showing
- Thread starter corper
- Start date
Manufacturers of drives are driven by their marketing departments who report drive sizes in Base 10 figures to make them seem bigger. I.e., 250 GB = 250,000,000,000 bytes. In reality storage and memory space within a computer must be calculated in terms of Base 2 math and that's what WinXP reports to its users:
1 KB = 1024 bytes
1 MB = 1024^2 = 1,048,576 bytes
1 GB = 1024^3 = 1,073,741,824 bytes
Thus, one must make the conversion from Base 10 to Base 2 to get the true amount of space available. For a "250" GB drive, the actual amount of space = 250,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 bytes or 232.8306437 GB. That's the figure that Win/DOS should be reporting to you.
BTW, all these calculations were conducted on an old Intel 486 chip, so they could be wrong.
1 KB = 1024 bytes
1 MB = 1024^2 = 1,048,576 bytes
1 GB = 1024^3 = 1,073,741,824 bytes
Thus, one must make the conversion from Base 10 to Base 2 to get the true amount of space available. For a "250" GB drive, the actual amount of space = 250,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 bytes or 232.8306437 GB. That's the figure that Win/DOS should be reporting to you.
BTW, all these calculations were conducted on an old Intel 486 chip, so they could be wrong.
corper
Sounds about right! once you take into account the differance due to formatting and the general missunderstanding about how hard drive capacity is calculated and advertised (see drofnala,s explaination)
Example: the 40gig samsung HDD fitted to the PC I am working on as we speak, reports:
40,048,852,992 bytes 37.2 GB formatted
(about the same % differance you are reporting)
Martin
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Sounds about right! once you take into account the differance due to formatting and the general missunderstanding about how hard drive capacity is calculated and advertised (see drofnala,s explaination)
Example: the 40gig samsung HDD fitted to the PC I am working on as we speak, reports:
40,048,852,992 bytes 37.2 GB formatted
(about the same % differance you are reporting)
Martin
We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.
- Thread starter
- #5
hey, thanx guys. that solves that mystery!
i figured it would be sumthing like that causing this. its almost like tv/comp monitor manufacturers giving the size of sets based on the diagonal measurement of the screen. who measures things diagonally?!
paparazi...my 40 gig hd also reports 37.2 gig and i always just chalked it up to them rounding off. i guess tho when u get to such large hd's (250 gig) the diff becomes much more noticable. i suppose hd manufacturers in the coming yrs will have to change their definitions of memory to comply with comp manufacturer's or vice versa otherwise this diff will simply continue to grow with time.
neways....thanx a bunch for the good info guys!
-steve
i figured it would be sumthing like that causing this. its almost like tv/comp monitor manufacturers giving the size of sets based on the diagonal measurement of the screen. who measures things diagonally?!
paparazi...my 40 gig hd also reports 37.2 gig and i always just chalked it up to them rounding off. i guess tho when u get to such large hd's (250 gig) the diff becomes much more noticable. i suppose hd manufacturers in the coming yrs will have to change their definitions of memory to comply with comp manufacturer's or vice versa otherwise this diff will simply continue to grow with time.
neways....thanx a bunch for the good info guys!
-steve
corper
The percentage differance "lost" if you want to call it that, is near as damn it the same.
The 40gb drive, at 7% and the 250gb drive at 8%.
It just looks a lot more on the 250 unit because of the large differance in drive capacity.
The space on a drive is technicaly termed capacity and not memory BTW.
This paticular question is asked regularly, to the point of annoyance (no offence intended) together with questions like "what should the temperature be on my XP2.2+ and which is the best graphics card"
Without intending to sound patronising, you may wish to try out this forums excellent FAQ section which covers many commonly asked questions.
Martin
We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.
The percentage differance "lost" if you want to call it that, is near as damn it the same.
The 40gb drive, at 7% and the 250gb drive at 8%.
It just looks a lot more on the 250 unit because of the large differance in drive capacity.
The space on a drive is technicaly termed capacity and not memory BTW.
This paticular question is asked regularly, to the point of annoyance (no offence intended) together with questions like "what should the temperature be on my XP2.2+ and which is the best graphics card"
Without intending to sound patronising, you may wish to try out this forums excellent FAQ section which covers many commonly asked questions.
Martin
We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.
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