Le_Murphant Posted February 19, 2007 CID Share Posted February 19, 2007 I was wondering why the hard drive space avaliable on windows platforms always is lower (sometimes significantly) than the manifacturer's specs. For example, I have a 60 GB HD and windows only sees 55, even before OS installation. For my 250 GB HD, its even worse, I see 235 GB with absolutely nothing on the disk. I thought it could be the Master Table File, but that is only a few MB large I believe. So do you guys know why the entire space isn't recognised? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swimmer Posted February 19, 2007 CID Share Posted February 19, 2007 It is the difference between what the manufacturer defines as a mb and what windows defines as a mb.. The manufactures say that 1 kb is 1000bytes. However, windows defines 1 kb as 1024bytes. So there is a small difference here.. but the bigger the drive size the more you "loose" to the math. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60505,00.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x_6985381 Posted February 19, 2007 CID Share Posted February 19, 2007 Swimmers right, windows / microsoft shows 1kb as 1024bytes, and HDD Manuf. use 1000bytes as their base. its a son of a gun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le_Murphant Posted February 19, 2007 Author CID Share Posted February 19, 2007 Hmm, good point, thought the math was wrong at first but I had forgotten that 1 windows GB is (1024)^3 and not ^2 bytes. Who uses bytes anyways Well, in case you're interested, I'l leave you guys the calculations I made. (60-55.8 )/60 = 0,07 = 7% Manufacturer's GB = 1 000 0000 000 bytes Windows GB = 1 073 741 824 bytes 73 741 824/1 000 000 000 = 0,074 = 7,4% The incertitude is probably due the the presence of only one kept decimal in the windows approximation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junerian Posted February 19, 2007 CID Share Posted February 19, 2007 I personnaly think manufacturers due that so they can say it's 500 GB (example) but it's not quite that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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