[RMBear]

Hi,

Just bought WD 200G 7200RPM SATA for storage on machine and installed it no problems - DOS saying 200G free and available, but XP (!!!!!!) says in use 13-odd Gig b4 I even put anything on it...

Went through and checked that wasn't formatted for boot - nope... Actually even reformatted drive, and DOS happy with 200G but XP (!!!!!!) coming up 13G short...

I know I've still got another 187G to play with (mmm.. full install of games rather then partial - main boot drive is Seagate 40G and still master drive), but I feel a bit ripped off...

Cheers...

__________________
Completely Heinzed...
Gigabyte boards, 6600GT graphics, Liteon burners, Seagate drives, Logitech input devices, Benq monitor, Zalmann CPU and SilentX Case Fans for Cooling... Seems pretty good to me, but what would I know...

[Raje]

I was on Newegg.com and I saw someones review of a 320GB hardrive, which I may actually get, which I think answers your question perfectly, so I copied and pasted.

N/A, 8/11/2005 9:30:29 AM

I would like to comment on the first post made on this item, its is 320gb.
ex) 160gb = 149gb
300gb = 279gb
320gb = 299gb

it is technically 320gb, just that its a binary system where some of the space on ALL hard drives cant be used.

[muckshifter]

Numbers numbers numbers ...

so which "rule" does WD use these days, 1,000 or 1024 ... oh, and DOS & XP do not mix ... how did you "format" the drive?

WD had a patch if your BIOS was not 48bit LBA compatable, but then SP1 fixed that.

My 120GB Maxtor has a total capacity of 122,935,001,088 bytes, which equals 114GB (binary)

... here's the explanation:

Most operating systems define a hard disk drives capacity using binary or base-2 mathematics. This translates to 1 gigabyte (GB) equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes. This is the correct value when using binary or base-2 mathematics.

However, hard disk drive manufacturers define drive sizes using base-10 mathematics, in which 1 GB is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes (rather than the 1,073,741,824 bytes, as listed above).

This discrepancy in reporting drive sizes (base-2 vs. base-10) may lead you to believe that you have a hard disk drive of less than expected capacity if you compare the figure reported by the operating system with the figure reported by your documentation, although the actual hard drive size is identical. Microsoft® Windows® simply counts the size differently, and will report a different, slightly smaller, figure.


.... so basically the hard drive manufacturers and the OS programmers used different bases that led to the discrepancy. They all 'con' you ... you learn to live with it.

hope this helps!!

Oh, and we won't go into "waisted space" ... not that relivent with XP & NTFS

[mudfrog]

Oh you lot are so greedy! lol