What is my Hard Disk Size?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ms_sprocket
  • Start date Start date
M

ms_sprocket

P4P800 Deluxe with 160gb and 120gb WD drives on the RAID controller not
using RAID.
I am using Windows XP Professional and have applied the 48 bit LBA
hotfix patch.

Depending upon where I look, here is what I get.


1. VIA RAID TOOL
152,627 MB
114,437 MB

2. Disk Management

149.05 GB
111.79 GB

3. My Computer

149.00
111.00

4. Right Click Drive Properties

160,039,239,680 Bytes
120,03,477,760 Bytes



I realize 1, 2 and 3 are close enough but:

It appears that Drive Properties is the only one that gets the numbers
right.

Why am I losing 11 Gig on a 160g drive and 9 gig on a 120 gig drive?

Is there that much overhead in formatting as NTFS?

BTW these are standard box drives not custom ones (ie:Dell) that might
have hidden partitions etc.

Tia...

ms sprocket
 
P4P800 Deluxe with 160gb and 120gb WD drives on the RAID controller not
using RAID.
I am using Windows XP Professional and have applied the 48 bit LBA
hotfix patch.

Depending upon where I look, here is what I get.


1. VIA RAID TOOL
152,627 MB
114,437 MB

2. Disk Management

149.05 GB
111.79 GB

3. My Computer

149.00
111.00

4. Right Click Drive Properties

160,039,239,680 Bytes
120,03,477,760 Bytes



I realize 1, 2 and 3 are close enough but:

It appears that Drive Properties is the only one that gets the numbers
right.

Why am I losing 11 Gig on a 160g drive and 9 gig on a 120 gig drive?

Is there that much overhead in formatting as NTFS?

BTW these are standard box drives not custom ones (ie:Dell) that might
have hidden partitions etc.

Tia...

ms sprocket
Click to expand...

There are a couple places the numbers can get screwed up. Drive
manufacturers consider a MB to be 1,000,000 bytes not 1,048,576 bytes
(1024x1024) in their advertising.
The formatted size is not the unformatted size.

Any way Disk Management and My Computer are virtually the same thing, just
truncated. Disk Management x 1024 is the Via Raid Tool number. Disk
Management x 1024x1024x1024 is the Drive Properties number. The results are
very close but not necessarily bang on.

Billh
 
P4P800 Deluxe with 160gb and 120gb WD drives on the RAID controller not
using RAID.
I am using Windows XP Professional and have applied the 48 bit LBA
hotfix patch.

Depending upon where I look, here is what I get.

1. VIA RAID TOOL
152,627 MB
114,437 MB
Click to expand...

"MB" = MiB
2. Disk Management

149.05 GB
111.79 GB
Click to expand...

"GB" = GiB
3. My Computer

149.00
111.00
Click to expand...

See 2. The difference to the former probably arises because here you get
partition sizes.
4. Right Click Drive Properties

160,039,239,680 Bytes
120,03,477,760 Bytes
Click to expand...

Again, partition sizes.
I realize 1, 2 and 3 are close enough but:

It appears that Drive Properties is the only one that gets the numbers
right.
Click to expand...

They're *all* right, just using the wrong prefixes!
Why am I losing 11 Gig on a 160g drive and 9 gig on a 120 gig drive?
Click to expand...

You are not losing any space. You get a bit more than 160 * 1000^3 bytes
(i.e. 160 gigabytes as defined by ISO or whoever) on a 160 gig drive, so
what more do you want?
Is there that much overhead in formatting as NTFS?
Click to expand...

No, this is not due to NTFS.

The confusion arises because even today you frequently find "giga"
(prefix G) synonymously used with "1024^3" (instead of "1000^3") and
"mega" (M) meant as "1024^2" (instead of "1000^3"). In fact, these
binary based factors have prefixes of their own now, like "gibi" (Gi)
and "mebi" (Mi). OK, they sound rather silly, so I usually prefer to use
"G-Bytes" (write: GiB) or "M-Bytes" (write: MiB). (Remember that BIOSes
count memory in "K"? Probably that's an old tradition and originally
meant Kwords - which is the same as KBytes for x86 and other
architectures -, with "K" meaning 1024 instead of 1000 for "k". This
could apparently not be continued for 1024^2, as M was already taken,
but a lot of people apparently didn't care, hoping that it would be
clear from the context, and now we've got the mess.) Operating systems
frequently do not incorporate the new prefixes yet (*points finger at
M$*), programmers are apparently used to thinking in "computer prefixes"
and tend to overlook potential conflicts with "physical prefixes" (a
physicist, for example, is used to those and wouldn't suspect some
different meaning unless sufficiently computer literate).

Stephan
 
1. VIA RAID TOOL
152,627 MB
114,437 MB

2. Disk Management

149.05 GB
111.79 GB

3. My Computer

149.00
111.00

4. Right Click Drive Properties

160,039,239,680 Bytes
Click to expand...

160,039,239,680 Byte
= 156,288,320 KB
= 152,625.3125 MB
= 149.05 GB
120,03,477,760 Bytes
Click to expand...

120,000,000,000 byte

= 117,187,500 KB
= 114,440.9 MB
= 111.76 GB

I realize 1, 2 and 3 are close enough but:
Click to expand...

They're all close enough.
1GB = 1024MB
1MB = 1024 KB
1KB = 1024 B
 
P4P800 Deluxe with 160gb and 120gb WD drives on the RAID controller not
using RAID.
I am using Windows XP Professional and have applied the 48 bit LBA
hotfix patch.

Depending upon where I look, here is what I get.


1. VIA RAID TOOL
152,627 MB
114,437 MB

2. Disk Management

149.05 GB
111.79 GB

3. My Computer

149.00
111.00

4. Right Click Drive Properties

160,039,239,680 Bytes
120,03,477,760 Bytes



I realize 1, 2 and 3 are close enough but:

It appears that Drive Properties is the only one that gets the numbers
right.

Why am I losing 11 Gig on a 160g drive and 9 gig on a 120 gig drive?

Is there that much overhead in formatting as NTFS?

BTW these are standard box drives not custom ones (ie:Dell) that might
have hidden partitions etc.

Tia...

ms sprocket
Click to expand...
This is a 'classic' problem.
The SI prefixes 'G' and 'M' (giga, and mega), technically define multiples
of 1E9, and 1E6. Now some years ago, there was an 'exception' proposed that
systems using binary addressing should be able to use the nearest binary
multiple instead (for things like memories). This potentially led to the
ludicrous situation that in some circumstances 'MB' could be 1000000, and in
others, 1048576 (2^20). The error is only 2.4% at a KB, but becomes nearly
5% at a MB, and is just under 7.4% at GB. Hence the recommendation for some
time, has instead been that people wanting to use the 'binary' versions,
should use KiB, MiB, and GiB instead. At present no programs that I know of
do this, and some programs use one format, and others the alternative. Some
use a 'hybrid' (MS, at times uses decimal numbers of binary MiB's!).
Drive sizes are in MB, and this should agree (less a small overhead), with
the value reported in 'drive properties'). The RAID tool, is reporting in
decimal numbers of binary MiB, while the Disk Manager and 'My computer', are
reporting in GiB. The small difference here, is the 'cost' of the partition.

Best Wishes
 
On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 15:14:40 -0500, (e-mail address removed) wrote:


Duhhh!!!!

Now why didn't I think of that!
Thanks to everyone for the great answers to my questions!
It is very much appreciated!

ms
 
I realize 1, 2 and 3 are close enough but:
It appears that Drive Properties is the only one that gets the numbers
right.

Why am I losing 11 Gig on a 160g drive and 9 gig on a 120 gig drive?
Click to expand...

Same reason a "1.44 mb" floppy only has 1.38 mb on it.

1,000,000 <> 1,048,576
 
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