Hard Drive: xp says 74.5 GB, diagnotic says 78.1 GB. Fixable?

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this is on a Western Digital 80 GB Drvie

How do I get the Windoes XP, say the same, as the diagnostic Western Digital disk

No errors on Drive. Working Properly

XT in system information, or on C; drive properties, says total space =74.5 GB, and 69.8 GB free

The Wesgtern Digital diagnostic disk, says there is a total of 78.1 GB, with 73.2 GB Free

On a new 3 month old emachines 2.6 win xp computer. My former Maxtor 80 GB disk drive had problems and errors, ... and they send this West Digital 80 GB as a replacement. No errors so far, after 4 days

The former problem disk drive, reported about 77 gb total, and 71.8 free, or so

Is this dead or damaged space, not being closer to 80 GB, or at least 78 GB

How can I get the XP to report, that there is 78 GB total, liek the diagnostic disk does

When i installed the replacement disk, i did not reformat it, I simply used the master retore CD, to load XP on the disk. I assumed it was formatted befroe they sent it to me, or the XP would format it it automatically. The system does work well now, expect for this descrepancy of low total disk space, of on 74.2 GB

thats in advace for reply's.
 
I installed XP onto a new drive of 40GB. I had problems with some peripherals so reformatted the hard drive and reloaded Win98 SE. I was suprised to see that the hard drive now read 30GB!

Now over a year later, after peripherals have been replaced with XP compatable ones, I have upgraded to XP and still I have a hard drive of 30GB not 40GB

Is this something allied to your situation? If anyone else has any ideas on this I would be happy to hear any view

(e-mail address removed)
 
Tallman said:
this is on a Western Digital 80 GB Drvie.

How do I get the Windoes XP, say the same, as the diagnostic
Western Digital disk?

No errors on Drive. Working Properly.

XT in system information, or on C; drive properties, says total space
=74.5 GB, and 69.8 GB free.

The Wesgtern Digital diagnostic disk, says there is a total of 78.1
GB, with 73.2 GB Free.
Click to expand...


WD calls it a 80,000,000,000 byte or 80GB hard drive, which is a base10
number. The OS will see the harddrive as 80,000,000,000/[1.024^3] or 74.5GB,
base2.
 
From the Western Digital website:

Determining drive capacity can be confusing at times because of the different measurement standards that are often used. When dealing with Windows and Mac based systems, you will commonly see both decimal measurements and binary measurements of a drive's capacity. In either case, a drive's capacity is measured by using the total number of bytes available on the drive. As long as the drive displays the correct number of bytes (approximate), you are getting the drive's full capacity.

Decimal vs. Binary:
For simplicity and consistency, hard drive manufacturers define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. This is a decimal (base 10) measurement and is the industry standard. However, certain system BIOSs, FDISK and Windows define a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes. Mac systems also use these values. These are binary (base 2) measurements.

To Determine Decimal Capacity:
A decimal capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,000,000,000 using base 10).

To Determine Binary Capacity:
A binary capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,073,741,824 using base 2).
This is why different utilities will report different capacities for the same drive. The number of bytes is the same, but a different number of bytes is used to make a megabyte and a gigabyte. This is similar to the difference between 0 degrees Celsius and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the same temperature, but will be reported differently depending on the scale you are using.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Various Drive Sizes and their Binary and Decimal Capacities



Drive Size in GB Approximate Total Bytes Decimal Capacity
(bytes/1,000,000,000)
Approximate Binary Capacity (bytes/1,073,724,841)
10 GB 10,000,000,000 10 GB 9.31 GB
20 GB 20,000,000,000 20 GB 18.63 GB
30 GB 30,000,000,000 30 GB 27.94 GB
40 GB 40,000,000,000 40 GB 37.25 GB
60 GB 60,000,000,000 60 GB 55.88 GB
80 GB 80,000,000,000 80 GB 74.51 GB
100 GB 100,000,000,000 100 GB 93.13 GB
120 GB 120,000,000,000 120 GB 111.76 GB
160 GB 160,000,000,000 160 GB 149.01 GB
180 GB 180,000,000,000 180 GB 167.64 GB
200 GB 200,000,000,000 200 GB 186.26 GB
250 GB 250,000,000,000 250 GB 232.83 GB


--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


| this is on a Western Digital 80 GB Drvie.
|
| How do I get the Windoes XP, say the same, as the diagnostic Western Digital disk?
|
| No errors on Drive. Working Properly.
|
| XT in system information, or on C; drive properties, says total space =74.5 GB, and 69.8 GB free.
|
| The Wesgtern Digital diagnostic disk, says there is a total of 78.1 GB, with 73.2 GB Free.
|
| On a new 3 month old emachines 2.6 win xp computer. My former Maxtor 80 GB disk drive had problems and errors, ... and they send this West Digital 80 GB as a replacement. No errors so far, after 4 days.
|
| The former problem disk drive, reported about 77 gb total, and 71.8 free, or so.
|
| Is this dead or damaged space, not being closer to 80 GB, or at least 78 GB?
|
| How can I get the XP to report, that there is 78 GB total, liek the diagnostic disk does?
|
| When i installed the replacement disk, i did not reformat it, I simply used the master retore CD, to load XP on the disk. I assumed it was formatted befroe they sent it to me, or the XP would format it it automatically. The system does work well now, expect for this descrepancy of low total disk space, of on 74.2 GB.
|
| thats in advace for reply's.
 
Carey Frisch [MVP] wrote:

To make a long story short, divide the manufacturers rated size, in GB, by
1.073742


250GB/1.073742=232.83GB base2
80GB/1.073742=74.51GB base2
 
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