HDD question re: size

  • Thread starter Thread starter mwebsurfer
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mwebsurfer

I have a Pc with 4 WD 250GB SATA drives. They were installed using XP
PRO. Each says its' size is 232.8 GB although prior to setup as a simple
volume it was 238.2GB Why does it lose 6Gb when formatted? Three were
listed as simple volumes before formatting. Should I have set them as
extended partitions? Any help will be appreciated as I want to use them
for archiving movies etc.
 
mwebsurfer said:
I have a Pc with 4 WD 250GB SATA drives. They were installed using XP PRO. Each says its' size is
232.8 GB although prior to setup as a
simple volume it was 238.2GB Why does it lose 6Gb when formatted?
Click to expand...

It doesnt. The hard drive manufacturer is using decimal GBs, so
they are 250,000,000,000 bytes. Win mostly uses binary GBs,
255,xxx,xxx,xxx bytes
Three were listed as simple volumes before formatting. Should I have set them as extended
partitions?
Click to expand...

No need.
 
By design, Formatting causes a loss of some GB's of harddrive space.
Nothing you can do about it.
 
I have a Pc with 4 WD 250GB SATA drives. They were installed using XP
PRO. Each says its' size is 232.8 GB although prior to setup as a simple
volume it was 238.2GB Why does it lose 6Gb when formatted? Three were
listed as simple volumes before formatting. Should I have set them as
extended partitions? Any help will be appreciated as I want to use them
for archiving movies etc.
Click to expand...

Windows setup displays the disk size in megabytes (MB), which makes it
250,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 = 238,418 MB.
238,418 MB / 1024 = 232.8 GB.
 
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