Question on hard drive size

[Wingman]

I just installed a new 80 gig hard drive. I used the Western Digital
software to set it up and everything works great. My question is that
windows is not recognizing the entire drive size. The bios sees all 80 gig,
but windows only sees 74.5 gig.

I also have a second hard drive that is 15 gig, but windows as only seen
that one as 13.9 gig. I am new to XP and installed it about 2 months ago as
a fresh install. Windows 98 saw the entire 15 gig, but xp did not. I
really did not care, because I had ordered the larger one anyway.

Both drives are formatted NTFS, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[R. McCarty]

Drives are marketed with size defined in Base 10, Computers
work on Base 2 - So it's just a mathematical difference between
us (people) and them (PCs).

 

[José Gallardo]

That's right. For the manufacturer, 1GB = 1000MB but actually, 1GB = 1024 MB.

Your HB: 80000000000 bits / 1024 = 78125000 bytes / 1024 = 76293.9 MB / 1024 = 75.4 GB.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

That's right. For the manufacturer, 1GB = 1000MB

A minor quibble: For the manufacturer, 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes,
which is not the same as 1000MB. Since a MB is 1024KB and a KB is
1024 bytes, 1000MB is 1,048,576,000.

but actually, 1GB =
1024 MB.

Your HB: 80000000000 bits

That's "bytes," not "bits."

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup


/ 1024 = 78125000 bytes / 1024 = 76293.9 MB

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I just installed a new 80 gig hard drive. I used the Western
Digital
software to set it up and everything works great. My question
is that
windows is not recognizing the entire drive size. The bios
sees all
80 gig, but windows only sees 74.5 gig.

Windows *is* recognizing the entire drive size. That's because,
despite what the manufacturer calls it, it's a 74.5GB drive.
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 an 80 billion
byte drive is actually about 74.5 GB.



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.

 

[Wingman]

Thanks to all for the information.

In


Windows *is* recognizing the entire drive size. That's because, despite
what the manufacturer calls it, it's a 74.5GB drive.
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 an 80 billion byte drive is actually about
74.5 GB.



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.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Thanks to all for the information.

You're welcome. Glad to help.

 

[Stan Brown]

I just installed a new 80 gig hard drive. I used the Western Digital
software to set it up and everything works great. My question is that
windows is not recognizing the entire drive size. The bios sees all 80 gig,
but windows only sees 74.5 gig.

That's right, though it's counterintuitive.

Hard drive makers (and your BIOS, apparently) make 1 GB = 1000*1000
*1000 bytes. Microsoft makes 1 GB = 1024*1024*1024 bytes.

80,000,000,000 / (1024)^3 = 74.5.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I just installed a new 80 gig hard drive. I used the Western Digital
software to set it up and everything works great. My question is that
windows is not recognizing the entire drive size. The bios sees all 80 gig,
but windows only sees 74.5 gig.

Different units. Drives are described in decimal billion; partitions,
for convenience, in a near binary unit - 1024 x 1024 x 1024. Factor of
about 1.073 accounts for the 74.5