No announcement yet.

xp eating harddrive space?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • xp eating harddrive space?

    Here's a little problem I'm facing with my new western digital 120gb hard drive (8mb buffer). In the Bios it shows it as a 120gb hard drive. When I loaded windows xp onto it, It says that it's only a total of 111gb? What happened to those 9 other gigs? Is this normal? Is there a way I can get this space back. My last laptop three years ago only had a 6gb hard drive so 9gb is lot of space to me! Thanks

  • #2
    A real GB = 1024MB's but HDD manufacturers use 1000MB's = GB plus any partitions you may have added cut's this down also. ;)
    <center>:cheers:</center>

    Comment


    • #3
      BITS vs. BYTES !!!
      it's just the way that it's calculated...
      the bigger the hd, the more difference you see...with a small hd, you'll "lose" a couple mb, but with the new, larger hds, you see a "loss" of a few gb....
      but don't worry, it's not lost, because it was never there to start with....
      SPAM Special Ops

      Comment


      • #4
        IT's not actually bits vs bytes... it's like Wiggo said. Manufacturers take the easy way out and round their storage figures off to a clean cut number.

        Comment


        • #5
          really, i was sure that was it..sorry, forget my last post then..:snip:
          SPAM Special Ops

          Comment


          • #6
            You weren't actually far wrong, if you had of kept explaining you might have got it right. :)

            All the different values (kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, etc..) are calculated by using 2. Probably doesn't make sense, but try this:

            1 Kilobyte = 2^10 (2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2) =1,024 bytes.
            1 Megabyte = 2^20 = 1,048,576 bytes
            1 Gigabyte = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes

            Whereas when manufacturers put sizes, they simply round off to the nearest big number... ie:

            1 Kilobyte = 1,000 bytes
            1 Megabyte = 1,000,000 bytes
            1 Gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes

            Now there was soem talk that the manufacturer sizes used a different notation to show what size it was (Gb instead of GB, or something like that) but I've got no idea about that.

            Comment


            • #7
              Beefy, using your formula a "120 Gb Drive" actually has 111.758 real GB & solves the missing 9 GB question.

              Comment


              • #8
                hey, it actually works. :)

                Comment


                • #9
                  And the larger the drive the larger the loss. ;)

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Correct as always Wiggo.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Thanks guys, that makes sense:cheers:

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        SO I WAS RIGHT !!!!!!! HHAAAAA !
                        hehehehe
                        SPAM Special Ops

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          here's some more info...

                          Prefixes for binary multiples
                          --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Factor Name Symbol Origin Derivation
                          210 kibi Ki kilobinary: (210)1 kilo: (103)1
                          220 mebi Mi megabinary: (210)2 mega: (103)2
                          230 gibi Gi gigabinary: (210)3 giga: (103)3
                          240 tebi Ti terabinary: (210)4 tera: (103)4
                          250 pebi Pi petabinary: (210)5 peta: (103)5
                          260 exbi Ei exabinary: (210)6 exa: (103)6


                          --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Examples and comparisons with SI prefixes
                          one kibibit 1 Kibit = 210 bit = 1024 bit
                          one kilobit 1 kbit = 103 bit = 1000 bit
                          one mebibyte 1 MiB = 220 B = 1 048 576 B
                          one megabyte 1 MB = 106 B = 1 000 000 B
                          one gibibyte 1 GiB = 230 B = 1 073 741 824 B
                          one gigabyte 1 GB = 109 B = 1 000 000 000 B

                          bad copy & paste from Here
                          SPAM Special Ops

                          Comment

                          Working...
                          X