Hard drive size

[2ME2U]

Why is my bios seeing a 80.2 gig drive and windows only seeing 76.3 gig drive I seem to have lost 4 gigs somehow

 

[micker377]

What version of windows? You have "hidden" files on all systems and different amounts in each version.

 

[2ME2U]

I run WIN ME and it it a slave drive with no files on it

 

[Blujacket]

And a formatted drive size will be different/less than an advertised/unpartitioned/unformatted size. 5% difference doesn't seem out of line.

 

[2ME2U]

It just seems a bit strange that the bios sees all the drive and the opp/sys cannot, In the old days it would have been a lot to loose 3gig Thanks for all your help Micker377 and Blujacket.

 

[Blujacket]

Just a bit more information, the BIOS doesn't see what happens to the drive after it has been recognized, such as the partitioning of it and the formatting. The BIOS reads/sees only what is stored in the chipset on the interface board on the drive.

 

[wolluf]

This is just the old chestnut - different definitions of a gigabyte. Drive manufacturers use 1,000,000,000 bytes, windows usually uses 1024 cubed (1,073,741,824 bytes) - also 1000 x 1024 squared and 1000 squared x 1024. So 80.2GB manufacturer's definition drive could appear as c. 74, 76 or 78GB.