hard drive space discrepancy

[henmaster]

Are hard drives generally advertised as a little bigger than they actually are? I ask because I have two - an IBM 75GXP (labeled as 46GB) and a Quantum Fireball EX (advertised as 6.4GB). But while there is no unpartitioned space on either, I can only store 42.9GB on the IBM and 5.99GB on the quantum (as shown by windows explorer). Anyone care to enlighten me?

 

[TheCorm]

Yes, the sizes advertised are the unformatted space on the disk. It's sort of like Monitor sizes advertising the total tube size rather than the viewable.

It's also worth remembering that 1GB = 1024MB rather than 1000MB.

Corm

 

[henmaster]

its interesting that you mention that 1024MB/1GB conversion factor... the 42.9 GB that I can use for storage on the IBM drive equates to 46.1 x 10^9 bytes, and the 5.99 GB that I can use on my quantum actually comes out to be 6.4 x 10^9 bytes.

And these numbers (the ones multiplied by 10^9) followed by "GB" are the advertized sizes of these HDDs. I suppose that is actually correct, since giga should mean 10^9. I guess that settles that then.

henmaster

 

[thorin]

Also take in to account that space is reserved for the FAT.

Thorin