recently bought a new 320gig hard drive but it seems to only have 300gig ?!

[jc]

I have recently bought a hard drive that says on the box and all the
advertising that it is a 320gig drive but when i format it into two
partition it is only 300gig about 149gig in each?

Is this right?

 

[Whomever]

I have recently bought a hard drive that says on the box and all the
advertising that it is a 320gig drive but when i format it into two
partition it is only 300gig about 149gig in each?

Is this right?

Go to the website of the manufacturer of you disk and look at the FAQ
section, I'm sure you will find the answer. Or go to google groups, find
this group and search for the answer.
To answer your question, yes it is right.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have recently bought a hard drive that says on the box and all the
advertising that it is a 320gig drive but when i format it into two
partition it is only 300gig about 149gig in each?

Is this right?

Yes.

Just for future reference:

Advertised --- Actual Capacity
10GB --- 9.31 GB
20GB --- 18.63 GB
30GB --- 27.94 GB
40GB --- 37.25 GB
60GB --- 55.88 GB
80GB --- 74.51 GB
100GB --- 93.13 GB
120GB --- 111.76 GB
160GB --- 149.01 GB
180GB --- 167.64 GB
200GB --- 186.26 GB
250GB --- 232.83 GB
320GB --- 298.02 GB
400GB --- 372.53 GB
500GB --- 465.66 GB
750GB --- 698.49 GB

The actual formatted and usable storage area is often less than what is
advertised on the boxes of today's hard disks. It's not that the
manufactures are outright lying, instead they are taking advantage of the
fact that there's no standard set for how to describe a drives storage
capacity.

This results from a definitional difference among the terms kilobyte (K),
megabyte (MB), and gigabyte (GB). In short, here we use the base-two
definition favored by most of the computer industry and used within Windows
itself, whereas hard drive vendors favor the base-10 definitions. With the
base-two definition, a kilobyte equals 1,024 (210) bytes; a megabyte totals
1,048,576 (220) bytes, or 1,024 kilobytes; and a gigabyte equals
1,073,741,824 (230) bytes, or 1,024 megabytes. With the base-10 definition
used by storage companies, a kilobyte equals 1,000 bytes, a megabyte equals
1,000,000 bytes, and a gigabyte equals 1,000,000,000 bytes.

Put another way, to a hard drive manufacturer, a drive that holds 6,400,000
bytes of data holds 6.4GB; to software that uses the base-two definition,
the same drive holds 6GB of data, or 6,104MB.

So, be prepared when you format that new 320GB drive and find only 298GB of
usable storage space. Isn't marketing wonderful?

 

[jc]

HI,

Thank you for this most informative answer, i will remember this next time i
buy another hard drive!

Cheers mate

Jason

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have recently bought a hard drive that says on the box and all the
advertising that it is a 320gig drive but when i format it into two
partition it is only 300gig about 149gig in each?

Is this right?

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 320 billion byte drive is actually around
300GB. 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.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

And if you buy dimensional lumber. A 2 x 4 is really 1 1/2 x 3 1/2

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

HI,

Thank you for this most informative answer, i will remember this next
time i buy another hard drive!

Cheers mate

Jason

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

And if you buy dimensional lumber. A 2 x 4 is really 1 1/2 x 3 1/2

Not to mention CRTs.

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

In

 

[Wesley Vogel]

LOL That reminds me of my TV, it's a 19", but on the cardboard box it said
21" in Canada. I always thought the Canadians were really getting cheated.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

And if you buy dimensional lumber. A 2 x 4 is really 1 1/2 x 3 1/2

Not to mention CRTs.

 

[Bob I]

Not to mention they have to pay for it using more dollars too!