What the...?

[Cerb]

OK, it's a Western Digital WD400, labeled as having 34GB capacity, and it's an OEM drive (looks like HP).
It formats at 34GB,
...but it's a WD400. Um...???

Anybody know what's going on here?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah. It's been firmware-limited to 34GB, either because of some OEM requirement (probably), or because the drive has so many defect sectors, it couldn't be sold as a 40GB, so they capacity-clipped it, and sold it cheap to some OEM customer.

You could always try using a version of the IBM/Hitachi HGST "FeatureTool" program and attempt to reset the capacity-clip. I would test/zero-wipe the drive carefully afterwards, to ensure that whatever space that you freed up isn't flaky/bad.

Also, be aware that changing the firmware soft-clip LBA limits will likely make existing partitions on the drive invalid, so don't do this with important data on the drive. (That not 100% true in all cases, but better safe than sorry.)

 

[Squally Leonharty]

HDD manufacturers work with 1000 bytes per kilobyte, whereas in a computer 1 kilobyte is 1024 bytes. With that in mind, a simple calculation shows that 40GB from HDD manufacturers is in fact (approximately) 38GB. That's somewhat closer to the 34GB you mentioned.

The 4GB that remains must be what VirtualLarry said.

 

[Winchester]

Why is the 1000 that manufacturers use not changed to 1024? Would it be that hard to avoid false advertising? Why do they not over compensate make a 44GB then say is is 40GB?

 

[Squally Leonharty]

Marketing tricks. 40GB is clearly larger than 38GB on the first sight.

 

[sunase]

Might want to check for hidden partitions too. If the drive originated in some Dell or HP system or whatever it wouldn't be unheard of for there to be a hidden partition with backup/restore data that was never assigned a drive letter. So if it wasn't a fresh drive and you were just formatting and not repartitioning you could overlook it.

 

[Cerb]

No hidden partitions--it's physically labeled 34GB, shows up in the BIOS and windows setup (before format) as 34GB. Too many bad sectors out of the factory makes sense for OEM drives on the cheap.

I have no desire to do anything to it...I was just curious as to why such a thing would be done .

 

[Frew]

Its the way it works. My 120gb HD is actually 111gb. Go figure.

 

[LoudTIGER]

look on the back of the hard drive for the pin configuration.

 

[Mr Smiley]

Actaully formating takes up very little space. It's a matter of Gibibytes vs Gigabytes.

1 Gigabyte (Hard drive term) = 10 to the 9th power of bytes, while 1 Gibibyte (Microsoft term) = 1,024 Megabytes (or 2 to the 30th power of bytes.) Confusing I know

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: LoudTIGER
look on the back of the hard drive for the pin configuration.

Standard Caviar affair, none:none:master:slave:cable

Thing is, it says, on the HDD:
WD Caviar
WD400
Enhanced IDE Hard Drive
(horizontal line)
34 GB

...and shows up as such--no extra partitions or anything. I'm most inclined to believe the bad sector bit.

 

[Pariah]

Years ago, it was common practice for large OEM's to sell drive sizes that didn't actually exist, but were really modified stock drives. Not sure why they did it, could have been some anti-grey market protection, to keep the drives from being resold elsewhere. Since it was a 40GB which are really old now, that's likely what happened. It's no bad sectors issues, because if it was drive performance would be horrendous.