280gb instead of 300gb

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I've just installed a second hard drive which says on the box 300gb disk size
but I've just formated it and its only 280gb what's happened to the remaining
10gb?
 
Computer said:
I've just installed a second hard drive which says on the box 300gb
disk size but I've just formated it and its only 280gb what's
happened to the remaining 10gb?
Click to expand...


10gb? You mean 20GB.

There is no remaining 20GB.

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while the
rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to the 30th
power (1,073,741,824) bytes. Some people point out that the official
international standard defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not
1,073,741,824. Correct though they are, using the binary value of GB is so
well established in the computer world that I consider using the decimal
value of a billion to be deceptive marketing.

Do the arithmetic yourself, and you will see that 300 billion bytes is
approximately equal to 280GB.
 
Computer said:
I've just installed a second hard drive which says on the box 300gb disk size
but I've just formated it and its only 280gb what's happened to the remaining
10gb?
Click to expand...
this is normal you never get the full size. you normally lose 2-3% of it
 
You appear to have lost 20GB, not 10GB, but aside from that there is no real
loss involved, it's how the capacity is being measured, using either the binary
system or the decimal system. Read this FAQ for details:

Why is my drive displaying a smaller than expected capacity than the indicated
size on the drive label?
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1


| I've just installed a second hard drive which says on the box 300gb disk size
| but I've just formated it and its only 280gb what's happened to the remaining
| 10gb?
| --
| Thanks Man
 
Are you sure you wanted to complain about the manufacturer's math? ;)
All kidding aside, did you fdisk before formatting, and if you did, do
you remember how big fdisk reported the partition?
Dose Disk Management window in the Computer Management utility
indicate that there is any unallocated space?
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatCapacity-c.html

message | I've just installed a second hard drive which says on the box 300gb
disk size
| but I've just formated it and its only 280gb what's happened to the
remaining
| 10gb?
| --
| Thanks Man
 
Computer said:
I've just installed a second hard drive which says on the box 300gb disk size
but I've just formated it and its only 280gb what's happened to the remaining
10gb?
Click to expand...


If you're "missing" 10 Gb, should the above read "290gb?"

WinXP, like other operating systems, measures kilobytes, megabytes,
and gigabytes as:

1 Kb = 1024 bytes
1 Mb = 1024 Kb = 1,048,576 bytes
1 Gb = 1024 Mb = 1,073,741,824 bytes

However, a common marketing ploy used by hard drive manufacturers
to make their products seem a bit larger than they really are is to
assign the value of an even 1,000,000,000 bytes to the gigabyte.

If you were to divide your hard drives advertised size of
300,000,000,000 bytes by 1024, you'd get a result of 292,968,750 Mb,
which is pretty close to what WinXP is reporting. The difference is a
result of the manufacturer rounding off the true size of the drive to
"300 Gb."


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH
 
Anthony said:
this is normal you never get the full size. you normally lose 2-3% of it
Click to expand...

2 - 3 % of 300 Gb is 6 - 9 GB not 20 Gb.

It's caused by the way a Gb is measured by drive manufacturers being
different to the way Windows measures it, and the drive also has an unusable
overhead caused by formatting structure and the FAT/Directory structure.
 
Thanks ken. Having installed my 2nd hard drive do I now have to go into bios
and alter something? I'm using Win XPhome.
 
=?Utf-8?B?Q29tcHV0ZXIgTWFu?= said:
I've just installed a second hard drive which says on the box 300gb disk size
but I've just formated it and its only 280gb what's happened to the remaining
10gb?
Click to expand...

Nothing happened to the remaining 20 gig. The info on the box was
incorrect. You bought a 280 gig drive, NOT a 300 gig drive.
 
I've just installed a second hard drive which says on the box 300gb disk size
but I've just formated it and its only 280gb what's happened to the remaining
10gb?
Click to expand...

Manufactures use decimal numbers for the size of a drive. That means
that a GB is 10**9 bytes, and your drive can store 300,000,000,000
bytes.

But software uses the binary definition of GB. So a gigabyte is 2**30
= 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Do the division, and you see that a 300(decimal)GB disk is
279.3967723846435546875 (binary)GB.
 
Computer said:
Thanks ken. Having installed my 2nd hard drive do I now have to go
into bios and alter something? I'm using Win XPhome.
Click to expand...


You're welcome. Glad to help.

No, you shouldn't have to do anything in the BIOS. If you formatted it and
seen the 280GB number, Windows has recognized it, and Windows couldn't have
recognized it if the BIOs hadn't. So you should be all set.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
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