Only 232GB

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apyankeefan

I Put together a system about a month or two ago, and I noticed when I
first booted it up that only 232GB showed up. It didn't bother me, but
now that I think about it, I wanna know where my other 18 Gig is!

Here's the specs
ABIT NI8-SLI Mobo
Pentium D 2.66 Overclocked to 3.2
Nvidia Geforce 6600
Soundblaster 5.1 Audio
Hitachi 250GB SATA
1 DVD Rom Drive
1 DVD+/-RW with Lightscribe

If you could let me know what I could do, to get the rest of my gig's
to show up. It would be great! And if you want to let me know what you
think about my system, you can let me know about that too!

Thanks in advanced for the advice/help
Allen Stalker
 
I Put together a system about a month or two ago, and I noticed when I
first booted it up that only 232GB showed up. It didn't bother me, but
now that I think about it, I wanna know where my other 18 Gig is!
Hitachi 250GB SATA
Click to expand...

Hard drive manufacturers use a different definition for hard drive
capacity than the real meaning of a gigabyte. They use 1,000,000,000
instead of 1,073,741,824.
 
Hard drive manufacturers use a different definition for hard drive capacity than the
real meaning of a gigabyte.
Click to expand...

That is the real meaning, the SI standard in fact.
 
I can't solve your problem, but I have noticed it too. I have 2 HDDs
doing RAID 0 Striping and I get only 400 or so GB of available space
with my two Seagate 250GB disks. That's a lot of memory to lose. I'd
like to know why as well. I'd think that NTFS would be able to give me
at least close to my full disk space, and not lose close to 100 GB
somewhere in the mix.

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I Put together a system about a month or two ago, and I noticed when I
first booted it up that only 232GB showed up. It didn't bother me, but
now that I think about it, I wanna know where my other 18 Gig is!

Here's the specs
ABIT NI8-SLI Mobo
Pentium D 2.66 Overclocked to 3.2
Nvidia Geforce 6600
Soundblaster 5.1 Audio
Hitachi 250GB SATA
1 DVD Rom Drive
1 DVD+/-RW with Lightscribe

If you could let me know what I could do, to get the rest of my gig's
to show up. It would be great! And if you want to let me know what you
think about my system, you can let me know about that too!

Thanks in advanced for the advice/help
Allen Stalker
Click to expand...

Hi Allen,
There's nothing wrong with those numbers.

There is a difference between how harddisk manufactures use GB and how
Windows (or computers in general) handle GB.
Harddisk manufactures use this:

1 GB = 1.000 MB = 1.000.000 KB = 1.000.000.000 bytes
So 250GB would be 250.000.000.000 bytes
This is scientificly correct because K is Kilo and that means 1000, and so
on.

Computers work with powers of 2 (bitwise).
1 bytes = 8 bits (with 2 to the power of 8 = 256 combination)
And because of that, they thought 1000 wasn't a very good number, bitwise,
so let's make it 2 to the power of 10.
So 1 KB = 2 to the power of 10 = 1024

1 GB = 1024 MB = 1048576 KB (1024x1024) = 1073741824 (1024x1024x1024) bytes
250GB would be 268.435.456.000 bytes

So 250 computerGB - 250 harddiskGB = 268.435.456.000 - 250.000.000.000 =
18.435.456.000
And in computer terms, this difference means about 18GB:
18.435.456.000 bytes = 18003375 KB = 17581,421 MB = 17,169 GB, so the 18 is
probably just that number rounded up.

My personal opinion on this:
Harddisk manufactures know how computers work and what people expect when
they are saying Megabyte or Gigabyte.
So they just found a perfectly legal and scientific correct way of cheating
the customers!

regards,
Marcel
 
There's nothing wrong with those numbers.

There is a difference between how harddisk manufactures use GB and how
Windows (or computers in general) handle GB.
Harddisk manufactures use this:

1 GB = 1.000 MB = 1.000.000 KB = 1.000.000.000 bytes
So 250GB would be 250.000.000.000 bytes
This is scientificly correct because K is Kilo and that means 1000,
and so on.
Click to expand...
Computers work with powers of 2 (bitwise).
Click to expand...

No they dont. That is only true of memory, not other stuff like
the cpu speed, comms speeds, hard drive sizes etc etc etc.
1 bytes = 8 bits (with 2 to the power of 8 = 256 combination)
And because of that, they thought 1000 wasn't a very good number,
bitwise, so let's make it 2 to the power of 10.
So 1 KB = 2 to the power of 10 = 1024

1 GB = 1024 MB = 1048576 KB (1024x1024) = 1073741824 (1024x1024x1024)
bytes 250GB would be 268.435.456.000 bytes

So 250 computerGB - 250 harddiskGB = 268.435.456.000 -
250.000.000.000 =
18.435.456.000
And in computer terms, this difference means about 18GB:
18.435.456.000 bytes = 18003375 KB = 17581,421 MB = 17,169 GB, so the
18 is probably just that number rounded up.
Click to expand...
My personal opinion on this:
Harddisk manufactures know how computers work and what people expect
when they are saying Megabyte or Gigabyte.
So they just found a perfectly legal and scientific correct way of
cheating the customers!
Click to expand...

Cant be cheating if its the SI standard.
 
No they dont. That is only true of memory, not other stuff like
the cpu speed, comms speeds, hard drive sizes etc etc etc.
Click to expand...

And the CPU registers. All data in computers is moved around and stored
using 8, 16, 32, 64-bit chunks etc. I think you know what he was getting
at Rod, surely. Just being a little pedantic there, weren't you? :)
 
I Put together a system about a month or two ago, and I noticed when I
first booted it up that only 232GB showed up. It didn't bother me, but
now that I think about it, I wanna know where my other 18 Gig is!

Here's the specs
ABIT NI8-SLI Mobo
Pentium D 2.66 Overclocked to 3.2
Nvidia Geforce 6600
Soundblaster 5.1 Audio
Hitachi 250GB SATA
1 DVD Rom Drive
1 DVD+/-RW with Lightscribe

If you could let me know what I could do, to get the rest of my gig's
to show up. It would be great! And if you want to let me know what you
think about my system, you can let me know about that too!

Thanks in advanced for the advice/help
Allen Stalker
Click to expand...

As others have pointed out the difference is between decimal and (pseudo)
binary representation of the (same) number. Just do a right click on the
hard drive and select properties. You'll see both numbers reported there
with the first one, with all the decimal positions, being the decimal
number (actual size). The 'compact' (smaller) number is the (pseudo) binary.

The decimal number is scientifically correct. The (pseudo) binary
representation is a slang approximation, which is why it will be 'rounded'
to 'gigs'.
 
thanks for good explanation,
faster way to calculate the real capacity is to divide 250.000.000.000 by
1024 three times.

250 000 000 000 / 1024 / 1024 /1024 = 232.83

--
--
Alan Kakareka
Data Recovery Service
786-253-8286 cell
http://www.247recovery.com
--
 
250 GB is the UNformatted capacity of the harddrive. After Formatting the
drive you are correctly left with 232 GB.
 
How come in my BIOS it shows 250 gb, but when I boot to windows, I only
have 232, is that just like you're explaining?
 
apyankeefan said:
How come in my BIOS it shows 250 gb, but when I boot to
windows, I only have 232, is that just like you're explaining?
Click to expand...

Win shows the size using binary GBs, the bios and the
manufacturer uses decimal GBs, 250,000,000,000 bytes.

If you right click on the drive within windows and
click on the propertys, it will show both types of
GBs with the both those numbers visible.
 
Rod Speed said:
No they dont. That is only true of memory, not other stuff like
the cpu speed, comms speeds, hard drive sizes etc etc etc.
Click to expand...
(snip)

Details... details... :)

regards,
Marcel
 
As others have pointed out the difference is between decimal and (pseudo)
binary representation of the (same) number. Just do a right click on the
hard drive and select properties. You'll see both numbers reported there
with the first one, with all the decimal positions, being the decimal
number (actual size). The 'compact' (smaller) number is the (pseudo)
binary.

The decimal number is scientifically correct. The (pseudo) binary
representation is a slang approximation, which is why it will be 'rounded'
to 'gigs'.
Click to expand...
All of which is not as big a deal today with these huge drives. When we had
only 'MBs', and not many of them it was a much bigger issue because whatever
we could get onto a 20-40mb drive we would.....:-)
 
Wrong, as always.
Click to expand...
Yup...yet again you are. Different filesystems result in different
amounts of usable free space after partitioning. Some of the *nix ones
leave you with very little..
 
Conor said:
Yup...yet again you are. Different filesystems result in different
amounts of usable free space after partitioning. Some of the *nix ones
leave you with very little..
Click to expand...


Used to drive me nutz when XP formats a drive and leaves the 8 mb
unpartitioned space/.................
 
As others have pointed out the difference is between decimal and
(pseudo) binary representation of the (same) number. Just do a
right click on the hard drive and select properties. You'll see
both numbers reported there with the first one, with all the
decimal positions, being the decimal number (actual size). The
'compact' (smaller) number is the (pseudo) binary.

The decimal number is scientifically correct. The (pseudo) binary
representation is a slang approximation, which is why it will be
'rounded' to 'gigs'.
Click to expand...

I think you mean "pseudo" binary, since you are the only person who
ever calls it that.
 
I think you mean "pseudo" binary, since you are the only person who
ever calls it that.
Click to expand...

Its pseudo binary in the sense that there is nothing intrinstically
binary about the number of bytes on a hard drive.
 
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