Disk Space?

[Novice]

Okay folks, another stupid problem that I can't
understand. I was having trouble installing Windows XP. I
was getting pissed and decided to try almost anything.
During that time I formatted my disc many different times
in many different ways. So I finally get XP working under
FAT32 but with about 4 gigabytes of disk space gone. The
hard disk I'm using is a 20GB Seagate. Windows was reading
only 18 gigs of space on the disk and only 16 gigs of
space left. Now I'm no mathmatichan, but I don't think
that adds up. I was thinking of defragmenting the disk
when I was sure I had everything running smoothly. Does
this sound like the thing to do? (And by the way, I've
already ran a thousand checkdisks, just to make this more
fun for you)

 

[Pete Baker]

Hi Novice

If I understand your post, you're asking why an advertised 20Gb disk only
shows 18Gb capacity in drive properties (16Gb after installing XP)?

If so, then no reason to be confused, although the drive manufacturer could
be
clearer.

You are not missing any space. In XP, open My Computer, select the
appropriate drive and right-click, select properties... beside 'capacity'
you
will see the total number of bytes on your disk and to the right the number
of Gigabytes.

For example, on my 40Gb 'data' disk I have 40,007,729,152 bytes... which is
also
listed in disk properties as a capacity of 37.2Gb.

The Hard Drive manufacturer refers to the 'bytes' total as 40Gb... and, in
purely decimal terms, it is - 40,000,000,000 bytes.

The 37.2Gb is what the computer 'sees'... because the computer calculates
1024 bytes as 1 Kb, 1024Kb as 1Mb, and 1024MB as 1Gb.....

so in my case 40007729152 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 (that's bytes => Kilobytes =>
Megabytes =>
Gigabytes) is 37.2Gigabytes as far as the computer is concerned.

Neither calculation of the disk size is 'wrong' ...... they are equivalent.

In your case the capacity - approx 20,038,645,76 bytes - will be referred
to
by the computer as 18.6Gb. The operating system (XP) will use up the
difference between this total capacity and the free space left (the 16Gb you
see available).

But a defrag is recommended after installation anyway.

Hope that helps
Pete

 

[WGWells]

I had the same prob when I added a new 40 gig Maxtor to
my system. Windows XP sets asside 4 gig when ypou are
doing an install. But once it's all in ok it'll giev it
back. If XP is on and working you can go to my computer
and you should see prtoper amount of disc space.

I had an old motherboard which did not support large hard
drives and ended up getting myself a new Titan P4.

You can load XP as either fat16 or fat32 but be careful
as I had two hd's one with fat16 and ended up almost
loosing everything.

You can get a dual boot with XP but you need to partition
the drive. Load one o/s on one partition and second o/s
on second partiton.

Check disk will not fix problems. You have to use a boot
disk with cd-rom support, go to format comand and set up
your hard drive first with proper partitions before
adding o/s

Hope this helps

 

[Earl F. Parrish]

Hey thanks Pete! You made me that much smarter and saved
me even more headache!

Just a note, defragmentation will not increase available disk space.
It just lays out the files contiguously.