I've installed a 120GB and formatted to NTFS, yet I am puzzled about the
different values that are seen.
BIOS sees it as 123.5GB, yet when I signed it, the system would only allow
117.7GB, and when I view the drive capacity in Windows Explorer it shows as
115GB.
Is there any logical reason why there are such differences in the figures, and
can I "reclaim" those 8Gigs ?


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On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 13:04:45 +0000, Brian H¹© wrote:

of 1024 bits per byte, whereas the marketing dept. of HD Manufacturers use
a decimal system. So in the real computer world, a million bytes is
1,048,576 (1024 x 1024) but the marketing dept. uses 1,000,000. Thus the
capacity of a HD, per manufacturer, is larger than reality in the computer
world, since they use a smaller numbering system. A 120 gig HD is really
114.44 gigs because of the different numbering systems being used. And the
computer is reporting the "real" value, not the one used by HD
manufacturers.

Dan Shackelford said:

Brilliant, thanks for that.

In article <pan.2003.11.28.13.46.33.280081@nospam.ix.netcom.c om>, Dan
Shackelford <danshack@nospam.ix.netcom.com> wrote:

I would also add that the name given to the capacity of a drive is
usually not very much like the true technical storage capability.
Marketing laws allow a little fudging, so they make something close to
it and call it whatever is the roundest number.

Brian H¹© wrote:
There's a few possibilities.....
1) the OS itself may have an addressing cap - Win9x / ME usually have
this problem. Since you're using NTFS, I'm assuming Win NT / XP / 2k.
2) The BIOS may be reading a preset (BIOS Internal) value (not likely),
or doing its own math of Cylenders times heads times... you get the idea.
3) The manufacturer's claim of 120GB may be... "Misleading". Take a look
and see if on the box it says in fine print, "...Where "1GB is assumed
to be 1,000,000,000 bits." Which is wrong.
1 GigaBybe = 1,024 MegaByte = 1,024,000,000 Bytes
4) The space may be part of a boot util reserved space, or maybe sectors
already identified as "Bad" in manufacturing and locked out.

there's a bunch of other possibilities... Let's see what the others have
to help. (I'll learn something new too, I think.)

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MichaelJ@BuffNET.net
BuffNET Technical Support Supervisor
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Howdy!

"BuffNET Tech Support - MichaelJ" <michaelj@buffnet.net> wrote in message
news:3fc80011_1@news3.buffnet.net...

Erm - 1 GB = 1024 MB = 1,073,741,824 bytes. You're mixing bases
again ...

However, in marketing, 1 GB = 1000 MB = 1,000,000,000 bytes.

RwP

Ralph Wade Phillips wrote:

DURF! Quite correct.... Damned Marketing pigs!

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MichaelJ@BuffNET.net
BuffNET Technical Support Supervisor
(BEHOLD! The power of the BOFH!)