160gb HDD showing as 134gb

C

computermaineack

New Member
Hey, I recently dled and installed a 160gb hd on my XP SP2 machine. However HDD Health is reading it as 134gb. Why is this? I'm pretty sure I installed it correctly to recoginze devices that big.


I don't want to lose 26gb :(.

EDIT: EVEREST Home Edition is reading it as 149gb.

EDIT EDIT: Ok, so, people keep responding to this thread, even though if they actually bothered to read ANY of my posts, they'd know that the problem was solved. Most of you aren't even reading this post. It's a problem with HDD Health. That's it. No BIOS or any other errors.
 
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The actually formatted capacity will always be lower. Unfortunately hard drive companies use a different system when measuring the capacity of their drives. Although 1024 MB make a GB, they take one GB to mean 1000MB. This makes overall "real" capacity smaller.

I have a 250GB drive that reads 233GB, and a 200GB drive that reads 189GB.


EDIT: As far as HDD Health reading the drive as 134GB, it's obviously a problem with the program, since both mine read as 134.217GB each. Everest is reading the correct value, since....


160GB (Hard drive) = 160,000,000,000 bytes

160,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 = 149.01GB
 
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Ah, okay, I see now. Couldn't the companies techincally be sued for false advertising? A GB, in no way, is technically specified as 1000mb...so it is false advertising.....
 
isnt also becuase windows formating makes hdd space compress or something....i dont know the word im looking for....but ya mine is 120gb and it reads at 111gb...so idk
 
LITHIUM said:
it says 134GB cause it takes some memory once you format it
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No, like I said above, it's a misread by the program, I downloaded it and tried it for myself, and falsely reported my two drives. You don't lose 15GB from a 149GB drive just from formatting...

Edit: And re: your false advertising question computermaineack, perhaps you should be a test case for that very issue, it certainly seems very unfair to the average novice pc user. :rolleyes:
 
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as Magicman said, its because the companies refer to a GB as 1,000MB, not 1,024MB like it really is. This will cause it to read lower than what what it says.
 
You are all wrong, its because he isn't running sp2 I bet, go run the Manufacturers install disk and then windows will see more of it.

What OS are you using.
 
myPCrocks said:
You are all wrong, its because he isn't running sp2 I bet, go run the Manufacturers install disk and then windows will see more of it.

What OS are you using.
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With all due respect, please care to read computermaineack's signature, and first post, and it will tell you that he is indeed "running sp2" and Windows XP.

And what exactly are you saying we are wrong about?
 
A 160 gig will read more than 134. Its obvious he didnt run the install disk, otherwise it would see all the drive it is susposed to.

I could have ASSUMED that was the computer he was refering to, but was being certain.He may be like me and running a total of 9 in one house.
 
myPCrocks said:
A 160 gig will read more than 134. Its obvious he didnt run the install disk, otherwise it would see all the drive it is susposed to.

I could have ASSUMED that was the computer he was refering to, but was being certain.He may be like me and running a total of 9 in one house.
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Even if that was somehow part of the problem, we are right about how hard drives refer a 1GB as 1000MB, not 1024MB. That will account for most of the "lost" space.
 
it wouldnt be fasle advertising, since the metric system goes kilo, mega, giga, and proceeds upwards by factors of 1000. In their point of view, they are correct. On a 160 gig drive, there are in fact 160,000,000,000 or so bytes. but the problem is, in the computer world, 1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes, 1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes, and 1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes.

The BYTE total is correct. you just dont actually realize that theyre there.


i mean think about it, if u have 1000 megs of something, then u still have an extra 24 megs of space left there before its a "computer" gig. It's all there, dont worry.
 
Would this perhaps be a BIOS/chipset 137GB limtation? Perhaps a BIOS flash upgrade or chipset driver upgrade's in order here. XP SP1 and newer is supposed to support hard drives over 137GB.
Tom
 
It could also be that the computer was installed with a standard XP CD, creating a partition smaller than the full size of the drive. In that case, the remaining capacity should appear in Disk Management as Unpartitioned Space. As everyone has said, though, it will only ever read as 149GB.
 
We do have more than this computer in our house, but I use this one, mainly because I paid for it, and it's in my room. Yes, I am running XP SP2. Windows and EVEREST Home Edition read the drive as 149, so I'm pretty sure it's HDD Health.

I haven't formatted the drive at all, just whatever they do at the factory. Windows isn't installed on it, it's a slave.

Magicman: I would try to sue them, but if I lost (which is most probable as they're big companies with lots of lawyers), I'd have to pay lawyer and court fees, money I could be using towards upgrading my computer :).
 
computermaineack said:
Magicman: I would try to sue them, but if I lost (which is most probable as they're big companies with lots of lawyers), I'd have to pay lawyer and court fees, money I could be using towards upgrading my computer :).
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Yeah, there's no way you'd win. Apart from anything else if it were possible to sue them for using a different system, it would have been done already. At least you know for subsequent purchases.
 
myPCrocks said:
A 160 gig will read more than 134. Its obvious he didnt run the install disk, otherwise it would see all the drive it is susposed to.

I could have ASSUMED that was the computer he was refering to, but was being certain.He may be like me and running a total of 9 in one house.
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First Post said:
Hey, I recently dled and installed a 160gb hd on my XP SP2 machine
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He said it in his first post. You do have a point, but it isnt implyed here. If your running XP without any service packs, then the hard drive size is limited. This was fixed with SP1 though.
 
I agree with myPCrocks in that it should show up as more than 134GB. It might be a partitioning error, or as OvenMaster said it might be a BIOS problem. I would look in Disk Management (Right-click on My Computer>Manage. Click on Disk Management) and look at the partitions of the disk and make sure there isn't any unallocated space.

But 134GB is around the point of a lot of limitations i have heard about with XP and/or BIOS restrictions. So it very well might be one of those. But do be sure to run the installation CD if you havent yet. That may fix the problem.
 
Hey... It happen to every computer. I have 40 GB and the computer read 31.4 GB. Its not a big deal. There is 500 GB out there that you can get. That's pretty much plenty to have. For Example, purchase 500 GB and computer will read probably around 480-490, but its on depends what motherboard and memory goes. So, I'll go what magicman said.

Cody J.
 
CodyJohnson117 said:
Hey... It happen to every computer. I have 40 GB and the computer read 31.4 GB.
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A 40GB drive should read as 37GB. You may be hitting the 32GB barrier, or the drive may be incorrectly jumpered to restrict its capacity to 32GB, although the the extra space you could by gain by fixing the problem is minimal.

purchase 500 GB and computer will read probably around 480-490, but its on depends what motherboard and memory goes.
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500GB would be read as 466GB. Unless your mobo doesn't support drives larger than 137GB, it will always read as 466GB, regardless of the what computer it's used in.
 
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