hard drive size question

[mwebsurfer]

I have four 250 GB Western Digital Sata drives in my pc and all appear
as 232.4 GB after formatting. 250 Divided by 232.4 = 1.07573 which I
believe is not the multiplier for converting from GB to billion bytes.
Can anyone advise me if anything is wrong as I seem to be losing 69.6
GB somewhere. My system drive is partitioned but the other drives are
setup as "dynamic drives when formatting. Any advise will be appreciated
as I seem to be missing some capacity somewhere.
PS: I'm using XP Pro.

 

[Doug]

|I have four 250 GB Western Digital Sata drives in my pc and all appear
| as 232.4 GB after formatting. 250 Divided by 232.4 = 1.07573 which I
| believe is not the multiplier for converting from GB to billion bytes.
| Can anyone advise me if anything is wrong as I seem to be losing 69.6
| GB somewhere. My system drive is partitioned but the other drives are
| setup as "dynamic drives when formatting. Any advise will be appreciated
| as I seem to be missing some capacity somewhere.
| PS: I'm using XP Pro.

Have a gander @
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...X5hbnl_JnBfc29ydF9ieT1kZmx0JnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=

--
Doug

I'm not an MVP a VIP nor do I have ESP.
I was just trying to help.
Please use your own best judgment before implementing any suggestions or
advice herein.
No warranty is expressed or implied.
Your mileage may vary.
See store for details.

Remove shoes to E-mail.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have four 250 GB Western Digital Sata drives in my pc and all appear
as 232.4 GB after formatting. 250 Divided by 232.4 = 1.07573 which I
believe is not the multiplier for converting from GB to billion bytes.
Can anyone advise me if anything is wrong as I seem to be losing 69.6
GB somewhere.

Nothing is wrong and you're not losing anything. Although you were sold what
were misleadingly described as 250GB drives, you actually have 232.4GB
drives.

You intimated at the issue yourself. 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. So a 120
billion byte drive is actually a little under 112GB. 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.

 

[Nepatsfan]

A9BXg.8177$K11.5880@trndny07,

I have four 250 GB Western Digital Sata drives in my pc and
all appear as 232.4 GB after formatting. 250 Divided by
232.4 = 1.07573 which I believe is not the multiplier for
converting from GB to billion bytes. Can anyone advise me if
anything is wrong as I seem to be losing 69.6 GB somewhere.
My system drive is partitioned but the other drives are
setup as "dynamic drives when formatting. Any advise will be
appreciated as I seem to be missing some capacity somewhere.
PS: I'm using XP Pro.

1024 X 1024 X 1024 = 1073741824 bytes

250000000000 bytes divided by 1073741824 bytes = 232.83 GB

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

Or
http://tinyurl.com/mkqj9

Good luck

Nepatsfan

 

[Zilbandy]

I have four 250 GB Western Digital Sata drives in my pc and all appear
as 232.4 GB after formatting. 250 Divided by 232.4 = 1.07573 which I
believe is not the multiplier for converting from GB to billion bytes.
Can anyone advise me if anything is wrong as I seem to be losing 69.6
GB somewhere.

It's all in the way the marketing people advertise hard drives. When
they claim a drive is 250 gigabyte drive, they are talking about
250,000,000,000 bytes. Now, since there are technically 1024 bytes per
kilobyte and then 1024 kilobytes per megabyte, and again, 1024
megabytes per gigabyte, you need to divide 250,000,000,000 by 1024,
then that result by 1024 and finally, that result by 1024 to convert
the marketing 250 gigabyte to the technical 250 GB.
250*10^9 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 = 232.83, so your drives are the correct
size as advertised. It's all in marketing to make them look bigger.
Hope this helps.