Losing Space on Hard Drives

[Sammye Coker]

I have one more question for you kind folks. Can someone
tell me why I lose so much space when I install a hard
drive?

When I installed a 120Gig as a second drive, I lost over 9
gigs of space. When I added a 300Gig external drive, I
lost over 21 gigs of space.

Is this normal? Is there a way to retrieve any of the
lost 30 gigs?

Thanks again!!

 

[Menno Hershberger]

I have one more question for you kind folks. Can someone
tell me why I lose so much space when I install a hard
drive?

When I installed a 120Gig as a second drive, I lost over 9
gigs of space. When I added a 300Gig external drive, I
lost over 21 gigs of space.

Is this normal? Is there a way to retrieve any of the
lost 30 gigs?

Thanks again!!

I have two 120 gig drives. Both show up as having a total of 111 gig
capacity. When they're selling them, 1,000 bits is a byte. In reality, 1024
bits is a byte. Or something like that. Someone else will surely explain it
better...

 

[Norm]

I have one more question for you kind folks. Can someone
tell me why I lose so much space when I install a hard
drive?

When I installed a 120Gig as a second drive, I lost over 9
gigs of space. When I added a 300Gig external drive, I
lost over 21 gigs of space.

Is this normal? Is there a way to retrieve any of the
lost 30 gigs?

Thanks again!!

Yes it is normal and there is nothing to retrieve. Read all about it here:
http://tinyurl.com/58jlr

 

[Shawn]

It is true that the actual size of the drive will be lower
because of the 1024 conversion, but if by losing space you
are referring to Windows reporting used space by the drive
that is a different concern.

I just installed a 250GB (actual space is only 232GB --
which is normal) hard drive with which I made two 116GB
partitions. Windows reports that the second partition has
21.8GB of data occupying it; however the drive is empty.
I still have not figured this out.

 

[Tim Slattery]

I have one more question for you kind folks. Can someone
tell me why I lose so much space when I install a hard
drive?

When I installed a 120Gig as a second drive, I lost over 9
gigs of space. When I added a 300Gig external drive, I
lost over 21 gigs of space.

You're not losing space. Hard drive manufacturers give the size of
their disks in decimal units. That is, a gigabyte is a billion bytes
(10**9 = 1,000,000,000). But FDISK and the operating system will tell
you the size of your disk in binary units. In this system a gigabyte =
2**30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes. Therefore, if the manufacturer says the
disk is 120 (decimal)GB, the OS will tell you it's 111.76 (binary)GB.
It looks like 7GBs have disappeared, but actually everything is as it
should be.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I have one more question for you kind folks. Can someone
tell me why I lose so much space when I install a hard
drive?

When I installed a 120Gig as a second drive, I lost over 9
gigs of space. When I added a 300Gig external drive, I
lost over 21 gigs of space.

Is this normal? Is there a way to retrieve any of the
lost 30 gigs?

No, you're not losing space. There is no "lost 30gigs."

The problem is with the definition of a gigabyte. 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 what was sold to you as a
120 billion byte drive is actually around 111GB, and a 300GB
drive is actually around 279GB.

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.

 

[Plato]

When I installed a 120Gig as a second drive, I lost over 9
gigs of space. When I added a 300Gig external drive, I
lost over 21 gigs of space.

Is this normal? Is there a way to retrieve any of the
lost 30 gigs?

You actually didn't lose anything. Hard drive makers inflate the size of
their drives for marketing purposes. In effect, they pulled a fast one
on you. Yes it's normal

 

[Alex Nichol]

When I installed a 120Gig as a second drive, I lost over 9
gigs of space. When I added a 300Gig external drive, I
lost over 21 gigs of space.

It is different measurement. A maker specifies a drive in decimal
numbers - 300GB is 300 billion. Partitions and related things in Widows
use a binary based near equivalent - 1024x1024x1024 for convenience. The
factor of 1.0736 accounts for the difference