What size, after formatting, will a 120GB HD read in XP?

[Rogue3]

I'm trying to make sure I'm getting the most out of my new Western Digital 120GB hard drive. After installing it I loaded up XP and formatted it (NTFS) and it reads 111GB. Is that correct? It seems a little low to me. Can anyone verify if this is correct or not before I start putting files on the drive?

Thanks!

 

[bozo1]

That is correct.

 

[Katax]

I had a 30GB that only showed up at around 28Gb when i formatted in NTFS.

 

[GoodToGo]

Windows has an excellent habit of "swallowing" some space up. MY 60 gigs shows up as 55.5 and so you are definitely fine.

 

[jonmullen]

It has nothing to do with windows eating your space. The space goes to alocate room for the MFB file that gives NTFS is functionality. Plus you have to realize that a 120gb harddrive is only really about 114.45Gb if my math is not mistaken. If you still have questions about this check the FAQ's there is one about this if I am not mistaken.

 

[BurnItDwn]

a "120"GB drive from a maker is 120,000,000,000 Bytes (to them gigabyte is 1 billion bytes)
In reality, a KB = 1024 Bytes. 1MB = 1024 KB. 1GB = 1024 MB.
1GB in reality, is 1,073,741,824 Bytes (aka 2 to the 30th power)

2^30

so in reality, for each "GB" the Hard drive makers say they are giving you you really only get about 93.13% of 1 GB (windows calculator says 93.1322574615478515625)

This means that a 120GB Hard drive only has about 111.76GB (windows calculator says 111.758708953857421875GB)

People tend to think in Decimal ... it makes sense to see 1GB written out on paper as 1,000,000,000 Bytes. however, in binary ... that would be a very odd figure.
2^10Bytes (1024 in Decimal) is 1000000000 in Binary
2^20Bytes(1048576 In Decimas) is 10000000000000000000 in Binary ... and you can see where this is going ....