New 320gb sata hd seen as 43gb by FDISK?

[JEDI]

this is the 1st time i'm using sata.

just received the hd from newegg.

machine:
ecs amd690gm with AMD x2 5000 cpu

i'm doing the same thing as i do w/pata drives: FDISK

but fdisk only sees it as a 43gig drive???

my version of fdisk is from dos 6.22 (i think). in other words, it's OLD.

do i need a newer version of fdisk to get it to work with sata?

or is it a bad hd?

 

[JEDI]

for kicks and giggles, i formatted the hd.

305,168Mb total disk space

32,768 bytes in each allocation unit
9,765,384 allocation units


so why does fdisk see the sata hd as 43,09.8M, and format.exe gives me 305gig?

 

[imaheadcase]

Why not just use the format feature when installing windows, or just mount the drive in windows and does that all for you?

 

[DarkRogue]

Originally posted by: JEDI
so why does format.exe gives me 305gig?

Because Hard Drive manufacturers use a different equation for gigabytes on a hard drive.
1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (1 billion) but in actuality, it's 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30)

The PC operates in binary and uses the latter method, HD manufacturers will put 320,000,000,000 bytes on an HD and claim it's 320GB. When the PC formats it, it will end up only seeing ~305GB due to the conversion.

To test:
320,000,000,000 bytes / 1,048,576 bytes per megabyte = 305,175.78125 Megabytes

It's not quite exact, but yeah it's roughly the same.

 

[imported_Scoop]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue

Originally posted by: JEDI
so why does format.exe gives me 305gig?

Because Hard Drive manufacturers use a different equation for gigabytes on a hard drive.
1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (1 billion) but in actuality, it's 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30)

The PC operates in binary and uses the latter method, HD manufacturers will put 320,000,000,000 bytes on an HD and claim it's 320GB. When the PC formats it, it will end up only seeing ~305GB due to the conversion.

To test:
320,000,000,000 bytes / 1,048,576 bytes per megabyte = 305,175.78125 Megabytes

It's not quite exact, but yeah it's roughly the same.

If this was really what the thread was about, I'm amazed. Someone with 11363 posts and join date from 2001 ought to know such a thing.

 

[DarkRogue]

Well, just because they have 11k+ posts doesn't mean they have to know *everything*.. For all I know, those posts were all accumulated in the Social forums, and the OP truly didn't know. Although, it's kind of odd since this is the forum for a tech-related site..

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: Scoop

Originally posted by: DarkRogue

Originally posted by: JEDI
so why does format.exe gives me 305gig?

Because Hard Drive manufacturers use a different equation for gigabytes on a hard drive.
1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (1 billion) but in actuality, it's 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30)

The PC operates in binary and uses the latter method, HD manufacturers will put 320,000,000,000 bytes on an HD and claim it's 320GB. When the PC formats it, it will end up only seeing ~305GB due to the conversion.

To test:
320,000,000,000 bytes / 1,048,576 bytes per megabyte = 305,175.78125 Megabytes

It's not quite exact, but yeah it's roughly the same.

If this was really what the thread was about, I'm amazed. Someone with 11363 posts and join date from 2001 ought to know such a thing.

lol.. it's not. i know 305gb = 320gig

my question was:
"so why does fdisk see the sata hd as 43,09.8M, and format.exe gives me 305gig? "

basically, why does fdisk say i only have 43,09.8M, but format.exe formats it correctly?
(thought format.exe uses the info from fdisk to format?)

 

[DarkRogue]

I have no idea what 43,09.8 is.. that comma is confusing me as there are only 2 place values after it lol.

Edit:
If you mean 43,009MB for ~ 43GB, maybe this is why:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/263044

SYMPTOMS
When you use Fdisk.exe to partition a hard disk that is larger than 64 GB (64 gigabytes, or 68,719,476,736 bytes) in size, Fdisk does not report the correct size of the hard disk.

The size that Fdisk reports is the full size of the hard disk minus 64 GB. For example, if the physical drive is 70.3 GB (75,484,122,112 bytes) in size, Fdisk reports the drive as being 6.3 GB (6,764,579,840 bytes) in size.

I'm assuming that 305GB - 64GB is still over 64GB so it does it again until it's less than 64GB.. which occurs around 49GB..

Edit2:
Doing the math from byte values, I end up with 44,064.544MB following that assumption.. still off by about 1GB though.

 

[cubby1223]

The bottom line is fdisk is a grossly outdated utility. Why would you even use it on a 320gb drive? NTFS is infinitely better than FAT32.

I don't even want to know how long the, what is it called when it scans through the drive for errors? takes to complete on a 320gb drive. Fdisk's already unbearable on a <10gb drive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Don't use FDISK. If nothing else, pick up a copy of Partition Commander, and use that.