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Hard Drive Size Confusion

L

LarryXtreme

Senior member
Hi,

I know this has probably been posted sometime before, but I couldn't find it with the search functon.

I bought a 60GB hard drive, but when I go into the Windows XP setup process, it only shows up as 57,240. Is this correct?

Thanks
 
Some applications or companies say a MB is equal to 1000000 bytes, a real MB is 1048576 bytes. If you multiply 1048576 times 57.240 you'll get your 60MB.
 
Thanks for your help!



THAT FVCKING SUCKS THOUGH!!!
Dammit. I got less than what I paid for. Is Western Digital the only company who does that?
 
I have a Maxtor 40GB in this computer... But the bytes actually add up to 40,970,051,584.

Does that mean that a Maxtor 60GB would actually have more space than a Western Digital 60GB due to they way they calculate space?

Furthermore, the space that shows up under "My Computer" is 55GB!! I LOSE A WHOLE 5GB!!!! THAT SUCKS!
 
Hi Larry,

Yes, 1024 bytes are a KB, not 1048.
I've also noticed the same problem with my hard drives. Do you have the latest BIOS revision? I'm not sure if this affects how the OS reads your HD size, but it might...Also, different file systems (FAT32, NTFS) are 'better' at storing data, so if you have a HD that is entirely NTFS it should appear to be larger than the same HD that is entirely FAT32.
 
When HD mfrs specify the size of their drives, they use 1GB=1 billion Bytes. When the OS sets it up, the OS uses 1GB=1024*1024*1024 Bytes. So the mfrs marketing depts are comitting a convenient consumer fraud (however, if you look in the fine print on the boxes, they usually will show their definition of GB to prevent lawsuits). So, 1 true kB=1024 Bytes, 1 true MB=1,048,576 Bytes, 1 True GB=1073741824 Bytes. Computers are in binary, not decimal-- something marketing departments conveniently forget when it suits their purposes. Tape drives are even worse as they use compressed data capacity, not raw, in their packaging. Just imagine if hd mfrs could get away with that...
.bh.
 
Shows I was asleep, I only went as far as MB, didn't take it to GB. Zepper has the right number of bytes for GB's.
 
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