Rod said:
Its just the binary/decimal MBs.
Not to worry at all.
Nothing to do with formatting.
Quite a lot to do with formatting. For instance, the 3.5" floppy disk
that we all refer to as 1.44MB, actually will hold up to 2mb of data,
and there are utilities that will allow you do do this (you really
shouldn't, but you can). The same media, formatted with DMF, holds
1.68MB data. The same principle applies to harddrives. Formatting
matters.
http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddrive/67/
The 3099MB is the max (yes, the difference in this case is binary vs
decimal), If you were to format it fat32, you will wind up wasting lot
of space to the format, and to "slack". NTFS is a little more efficient
in both areas. The full picture is more complex, of course.
See this table, your drive is reporting correctly.
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/79-880097.pdf#search="Decimal Megabytes WD"
Nope, I've installed it on a lot less than that, with Office Pro as well.
This is an example, of you CAN, but you shouldn't. If you're stuck with
limitations like this, you should use an older OS. 3GB is more
comfortable on Win2k, and plenty of room for win98. If this drive came
with your computer, you're almost certialy better off with an older OS,
considering the computers at this time were all running win98, and had
much slower processors and less RAM.
Wrong. Plenty of room for Office.
I didn't say NO room, I said Not Much room. Add in an HP all in 1
printer, that's, -I kid you not-, an extra 50mb-200MB or more. I've
even seen these bloated things offer a 1GB "full" version. Add in an
antivirus program, a firewall, and some other basic applications and
you're in a world of hurt. It adds up real fast.
Archiving sp2 eats up several hundred MB (Actual size depends on
system), There are about 70MB in updates (again, depending on system,
and whether you want to do "optionals" like Media player 10), that are
also archived so they can be uninstalled. It adds up real fast. And
having a small drive forces you to do things like remove the hidden
archives, which most people don't even know about. Slipstreaming helps,
but, again, it's one of those things that only the geekier set bother
with.
Overall, it's a higher maintence deal.