Lost GigaBytes

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N

n o s p a m p l e a s e

I installed a 120 GB additional disk. Upon formatting I shows only 114
GB. Why? Where are the other GBs?
 
n said:
I installed a 120 GB additional disk. Upon formatting I shows only 114
GB. Why? Where are the other GBs?

Bill Gates is using them to store surveillance software.
 
n said:
I installed a 120 GB additional disk. Upon formatting I shows only 114
GB. Why? Where are the other GBs?

Ok, seriously:

Drive manufacturers count by 1000s and Windows by 1024s. If you don't
know about this difference, it will make Windows look like it is
undereporting the size of your hard drive.
 
I installed a 120 GB additional disk.

1) False
Upon formatting I shows only 114
GB.

2) True


See # 1
Where are the other GBs?

Mathematically truncated. "Giga" and "bytes" are being used
to denote a number of bits in a decimal system (by the drive
manufacturer), which isn't possibly correct as bits are a
binary numbering system. The HDD manufacturers chose the
smaller definition of "gigabyte" to make their drives seem
larger than they actually are.
 
This is how Seagate explains it: Discrepancy Between Reported Capacity and
Actual Capacity
Many customers are confused when their operating system reports, for
example, that their new ST310240A 10.24-Gbyte hard drive is reporting only
9.85 Gbytes in usable capacity. Several factors may come into play when you
see the reported capacity of a disc drive. Unfortunately there are two
different number systems which are used to express units of storage
capacity; binary, which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes, and
decimal, which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1000 bytes. The storage
industry standard is to display capacity in decimal. Even though in binary
you have more bytes, the decimal representation of a Gbyte shows greater
capacity. In order to accurately understand the true capacity of your disc
drive, you need to know which base unit of measure (binary or decimal) is
being used to represent capacity. Another factor that can cause
misrepresentation of the size of a disc drive is BIOS limitations. Many
older BIOS are limited in the number of cylinders they can support.
 
n said:
I installed a 120 GB additional disk. Upon formatting I shows only 114
GB. Why? Where are the other GBs?

When the manufacturer says 120GB, they really mean 120,000,000,000 bytes.
Since the OS and the BIOS see a KB as 1024 bytes, we need to cube this
figure. [1.024^3]= 1.073741824

120,000,000,000/1.073741824= 111.76GB base 2

Nothing is lost.
 
The UNFORMATTED capacity of the harddrive is 120GB. After formatting, which
you have to do to use it, you have 114GB.
Everything is fine.
 
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