New HD but less space

sup2jzgte

sup2jzgte

New Member
I bought a Western Digital 320 Gig hard drive for my new build, but instead of having 320 it is only giving me 298. Any ideas?
 
A 500gb model sees 465gb here. My old 250gb saw 238,4gb after the initial partitioning. The actual amount seen in bytes will be larger then 320gb there. But the coversion into gigs following some drive space used for things like the mbr and system volume information takes some from that.

The marketed figures are simply rounded off rather then seeing the actual figures for cylinders, heads, and sectors and having to calculate those. My old 120gb saw 114gb after partitioning. Apparently you haven't changed drives much since this is normal to see.
 
PC eye said:
A 500gb model sees 465gb here. My old 250gb saw 238,4gb after the initial partitioning. The actual amount seen in bytes will be larger then 320gb there. But the coversion into gigs following some drive space used for things like the mbr and system volume information takes some from that.

The marketed figures are simply rounded off rather then seeing the actual figures for cylinders, heads, and sectors and having to calculate those. My old 120gb saw 114gb after partitioning. Apparently you haven't changed drives much since this is normal to see.
Click to expand...

No not really
 
Actually, it has nothing to do with partitions, mbr and system volume information.

The harddrive manufacturers uses 1000 per unit, whereas Windows uses 1024. So when you do the math: 320000000000 / 1024^3 = 298
 
When you first get into this stuff and wonder why the advertized figure and the drive space available are two different things you'll scratch your head wondering what's going on. The tip for not getting caught short when needing more drive space that would be seen with a new drive is first planning on a small percentage deducted from the listed size.

If I look at the slightly less then 35gb figure for the 500gb drives used here taken out of a 500gb total I first round that off to 35 even and double 500 to 1tb for 70gb there and then divide by 10 to see 7gb out of every 100gb roughly. To see a full 500gb I would then have to buy a new 640gb or 750gb drive to cover that plus have some extra.

Now when right clicking to see the properties on a 500gb drive what do you see? 500+ next to the 465gb. Do the same there to see the 320+ when converted into bytes.

 
tyttebøvs said:
Actually, it has nothing to do with partitions, mbr and system volume information.

The harddrive manufacturers uses 1000 per unit, whereas Windows uses 1024. So when you do the math: 320000000000 / 1024^3 = 298
Click to expand...

It's called the difference between the decimal and binary system when calculating the total amount of bytes. A 100gb drive would seen as 100 GB= 100,000,000,000 bytes in decimal while the same drive would see 93.13 GB using the binary method. Binary would see 1,073,724,841.
 
tyttebøvs said:
What? You have some far fetched stories, mr. pc eye.

The math is simple, you don't need to make it complicated :)
Click to expand...

Far fetched stories? Sounds like you've been listening to Fabulous Fabricator too much lately. :P

When simply converting the 320gb decimal figure to binary you end up with 298.0232238769531
 
Harddrive manufactures know what there doing, it nothing but a sales hype game to make you believe your getting more than you really are. They have even been sued over it a few times. But they claim that in fits in the (SI) standards to get by with it. Theres some that want to call one GiB and the other GB so the consumer can tell what standard there going by.
 
You'll never see them express drive sizes in decimal or fractionalized figures on the front cover of a retail carton or when listed on a product page. The label on the drives themselves for the number of cylinders, heads, sectors which can be calculated for actual drive sizes allows them to slide on that.
 
if you're fed up with the human numbers vs computer numbers then get a hd that's advertised as is. i've seen maxtors with a colorful sticker that says something like "you'll get the advertised space." but i wouldn't buy a maxtor
 
I wouldn't either. I guess that's from running WD and some IBM drives for too long.

Most people walking into a store and spotting a hard drive on a shelf that looks like the one they want are not going to remember to calculate 1024 x 1024 x 1024 per binary gig and then look at the rounded off decimal version stamped on a box to see what they actually end up with. The first thought will be "that looks big enough" and simply buy it on the spot and then see ? "where's the advertized drive space? :confused: :mad:GGrrrr... "
 
Once you get throuigh partitioning, formatting, and installing Windows and your programs, games, etc. you'll suddenly find yourself down to about 295gb actual free space out of the 298gb total. The way drives are sold simply conflicts with the actual drive space available making everyone fume at times.
 
PC eye said:
It's called the difference between the decimal and binary system when calculating the total amount of bytes. A 100gb drive would seen as 100 GB= 100,000,000,000 bytes in decimal while the same drive would see 93.13 GB using the binary method. Binary would see 1,073,724,841.
Click to expand...

Uhm, no. In the decimal system you express a given value with the numbers 0-9. In the binary system you express a given value withe the numbers 0 and 1.

The value doesn't change just because you convert it from one system to another.
 
When you dig out a calculator and perform the math(1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,073,741,824) you have to convert the 0s and 1s into a working figure in the 0-9 form in order to see the end result not something like 101000000 for a 320 figure entered. Likewise the conversion from decimal to binary then expreseed in decimal form is the way you see 298gb not 320gb.

Since the multiplication factor is not an even 1 billion = 1gb but the binary 1024cubed if you simply multiplied the end total denominator by 320 you would come up with a figure showing 3.435973837 to the 11th power. Since not everyone is a math wiz the obvoius conclusion to find out what will be seen when converting decimal to binary to see just what drive space will be seen while Windows is running with the 1024 factor a quick trip to the local online conversion tool makes that far easier. http://tomorrowtimes.blogspot.com/2007/08/hard-drive-capacity-calculator.html
 
No, you got it wrong. 1073741824 is 1000000000000000000000000000000 written in binary form. If the value changed, everything would break. You don't lose anything just because you write the value in another system.

Edit: And since it will never end with you, i'll get of the thread now :)
 
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You don't want the binary expression in 1s and 0s to begin with. That's where you are getting lost. When buying a drive you want to know in gigabytes just what will be seen in Windows not 100000000000000000000000000000000 or whatever math equation.

Before you leave you may want to explain to sup2jzgte just how to see that converted into the 298gb figure he is seeing while in Windows.
 
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