incorrect Hard Drive capacity

[theesh]

Hello, this is my issue. I have had a maxtor 200gig hard drive sitting,
untouched and un opened, for about a year. I decided to make it an
extrenal drive. I purchased the NexStar 3 external enclosure for the
hard drive, installed it, and everything runs fine. The only ctach is
the hard drive is missing about 11gigs of space. The enclosure is for
drives up to 500gigs so that is not the problem. I am used to missing a
few megs here and there for odds and ends that cannot be helped, but
11gigs? The hard drive is reading that the storage capacity is 189
rather than 200.

I have done some research on the subject and have not found an anwser.
I am running windows xp SP2 on a Dell Dimention 8200. I am going to try
flashing the bios shortly to see if that helps. I am thankful for any
help you may provide

 

[theesh]

well, I can't flash my bios because my floppy drive is dead... ugg, any
other suggestions?

 

[Jerry]

You have fallen victim to the difference in counting between base 10 an base
2.

Base 10: 1,000 x 1,000, x 1000 = 1,000,000,000 or 1Gb

Base 2: 1,024 x 1.024 x 1,024 = 1,073,741,824 or 1Gb

Now muliply the base 2 1Gb by 189 and you get 202,937,204,736 (or pretty
close to 200Gb)

The drive manufacturer uses base 10 and the computer uses base 2.

 

[JS]

The missing 11GB is because the drive manufacture states drive size in
Decimal while the PC uses Binary notation and therefore you will see a
difference, this is normal.

JS

 

[Esh]

k, thanks.