Why doesn't Win98se....

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael Fell
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael Fell

recognize my hard drive as a 120 gig? Win98se shows my drive as a 114
gig. My bios shows the drive as a 120 gig. I am running a Maxtor. I
did the reformat thing several times to no avail.

Thanks

Mike
 
Actual hard drive capacity is based upon the true definition of a GB being
1,024 MB and a MB being 1,024 KB. Most hard drive manufacturers list their
drives at a capacity based upon multiples of 1,000 instead of 1,024, so this
means that the actual capacity is technically less than advertised. Your
operating system will recognize the drive's actual capacity after
formatting, not the manufacturer's advertised capacity. Formatting also
takes up some space, so the actual space on an advertised 120 GB drive would
be somewhere in the neighborhood of 114.4 GB.

Russell
http://tastycomputers.com
 
There's nothing wrong with your drive. It's just that Maxtor (like most
companies) lies about the actual size of their drives. Here's an
explanation from
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/shownotes/story/0,24330,3401248,00.html:
Ever bought a 40 GB hard drive, only to have Windows report that it's only
38 GB? Well, this time it's probably not Windows' fault, but the hard driver
manufacturers' way of describing the size of the drive. 1 GB is not exactly
a billion bytes, because it's measured in binary, not decimal standards.
It's actually is two to the 30th power, or 1,073,741,824 bytes. In addition,
manufactures often report the unformatted size of the drive instead of the
formatted size, and, of course, you have to format a hard drive to be able
to use it. After formatting a drive, you would usually lose around 2GB for
the table of contents and other elements.

--Mitchua
 
Michael said:
recognize my hard drive as a 120 gig? Win98se shows my drive as a 114
gig. My bios shows the drive as a 120 gig. I am running a Maxtor. I
did the reformat thing several times to no avail.
Click to expand...


That's normal. Hard drive consider 1KB = 1000 bytes, but the OS
considers 1KB = 1024 bytes.



-WD
 
lol You beat me to it Russell :-) I wish hard drive manufacturers would
learn to count in binary.

--Mitchua
 
| lol You beat me to it Russell :-) I wish hard drive manufacturers would
| learn to count in binary.

They already know how, but the answers don't sound as good! ;-)

Larc



§§§ - Please raise temperature of mail to reply by e-mail - §§§
 
problem is there are only 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary
and those who don't...

AMD'r
 
problem is there are only 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary
and those who don't...

AMD'r
Click to expand...
And you don't. You only need two states so a 1 would suffice or 01 to
make the point.
 
problem is there are only 10 kinds of people, those who understand
binary
And you don't. You only need two states so a 1 would suffice or 01 to
make the point.
Click to expand...

I think he probably does understand binary, and the traditional joke is
exactly as he said it. Stop being stupid.

Steve
 
This is an old issue of counting bytes in different ways.

The strange thing is, K=1024 is fine, we all accept it, but M=1000x1024,
(not 1024x1024)
So when we talk about 30K bytes, it means 30x1024=30,720 bytes.
But when we talk about 30M bytes, it means 30x1000x1024=30,720,000 bytes
I am not sure about how to count G.
 
Howdy!

???? said:
This is an old issue of counting bytes in different ways.

The strange thing is, K=1024 is fine, we all accept it, but M=1000x1024,
(not 1024x1024)
Click to expand...

Nope - M is 1000 x 1000 or 1024 x 1024. Anyone that mixes is ...
well, let's just say they have to drop their pants to talk.
So when we talk about 30K bytes, it means 30x1024=30,720 bytes.
But when we talk about 30M bytes, it means 30x1000x1024=30,720,000 bytes
I am not sure about how to count G.
Click to expand...

Not me - I mean 30 x 1024 x 1024 if talking about memory or disk
space.

Unless I'm buying a disk - then it's 30 x 1000 x 1000 from the
manufacturer. Sigh.

RwP
 
Greetings...

And you don't. You only need two states so a 1 would suffice or 01 to
make the point.
Click to expand...

I guess that puts you in the second category - LOL



ll
Kanda'

<>SPAM-KILLER<>- If you really want to contact me, then -
kandaje<at>bresnan<dot>net

You figure it out...
 
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