HD 120gb only shows 111gb

bfmctango57 · Mar 16, 2009

Here is the skinny.

Built system a few years ago. Installed 120gb HD. Partitioned HD into (3) 40gb sectors. Recently, I did away with the partitions and now there is 10.3gb of space that I cannot recover. When I access administrative tools/computer management/disc management is see 111gb. Where is the other free space? How can I recover it? I ran across somewhere but, I do not remember where, it said 10.g and it's nowhere in the computer. HELP!!!

Trap05 · Mar 16, 2009

That's normal you lose some in formatting. For example a 160GB is about 149GB and a 250GB is about 232GB.

Automata · Mar 16, 2009

Trap05 said:
That's normal you lose some in formatting. For example a 160GB is about 149GB and a 250GB is about 232GB.

No. You *do not* lose space when formatting.

The difference is in how they advertise/make the drive. They advertise the drive as 1000MB per GB. Windows (and any OS) reads it as 1024MB per GB.

c627627 · Mar 16, 2009

Yeah , when it says xxx GB on the box, it doesn't mean xxx GB of actual usable space.

Hard drive manufacturers interpret one gigabyte as 1 billion bytes, whereas Windows interpret one gigabyte by the correct number of 1.07 billion bytes.

Space is also used for non-storage purposes...

Bottom line is at 111GB you are not loosing any space on the so called 120GB drive.

jmdixon85 · Mar 16, 2009

^1+. This has always been the case, Even the good old floppy disk couldn't store as much data as the sticky lable said it would. You always get a bit less space than the drives stated capacity. Take my RAID 0 array: two 250GB disks should equal 500GB, But once formatted I have only 467GB to play with. Don't worry, theres nothing wrong with your PC and your not losing any hard disk space.

Rich'[ard] · Mar 16, 2009

my bloody 750gb Samsung gets cut down to 698GB. *crying*
it'd be better if they called it a 700GB drive instead.

bfmctango57 · Mar 16, 2009

How come when I partitioned the HD into (3) 40gb sectors it was (3) 40gb drives? C:40 D:40 E:40 I then wiped them clean and reinstalled windows and when I was done 10.3gb was gone.

bfmctango57 · Mar 16, 2009

Oh ok guys.

Thanks for the info. :beer:

Charr · Mar 16, 2009

bfmctango57 said:
How come when I partitioned the HD into (3) 40gb sectors it was (3) 40gb drives? C:40 D:40 E:40 I then wiped them clean and reinstalled windows and when I was done 10.3gb was gone.

When the partitions were formatted, the size was rounded to the number of cylinders.

You do lose a little space with formatting, but I mean a little. For NTFS, its 50MB / 1TB. This is for the journal and inodes (keeps track of where data is).

petteyg359 · Mar 16, 2009

thideras said:
No. You *do not* lose space when formatting.

The difference is in how they advertise/make the drive. They advertise the drive as 1000MB per GB. Windows (and any OS) reads it as 1024MB per GB.

Partially true. Linux will show you the size in both binary and decimal units. Whether your DE or file manager tool does is another issue, but Linux and GNU tools have command line options to show either decimal or binary sizes.

c627627 said:
Yeah , when it says xxx GB on the box, it doesn't mean xxx GB of actual usable space.

Hard drive manufacturers interpret one gigabyte as 1 billion bytes, whereas Windows interpret one gigabyte by the correct number of 1.07 billion bytes.

Rich'[ard] said:
my bloody 750gb Samsung gets cut down to 698GB. *crying*
it'd be better if they called it a 700GB drive instead.

False. KB ≠ GiB. MB ≠ GiB. GB ≠ GiB. As stated on the box, 1GB = 1000MB. Windows shows 1024MB (binary) units, but labels them as decimal. Windows is at fault here, not the drive manufacturer. When you blame the drive manufacturer, you support the lawsuit-happy idiots. Please don't do that.

c627627 · Mar 16, 2009

Point taken, they have a unit for digital information storage, abbreviated GiB.

But where else are we gonna use the HDs? It's not unreasonable for an average user to ask that the number on the box correspond to the number on the computer... unless we owned the storage company... there's probably no reason to defend their use of GiB instead of GB...

Is there any other believable reason that they do it other than to make more money by selling less than they would have to if the number on the box corresponded to the number on people's machines...

petteyg359 · Mar 16, 2009

c627627 said:
Point taken, they have a unit for digital information storage, abbreviated GiB.

But where else are we gonna use the HDs? It's not unreasonable for an average user to ask that the number on the box correspond to the number on the computer... unless we owned the storage company... there's probably no reason to defend their use of GiB instead of GB...

Is there any other believable reason that they do it other than to make more money by selling less than they would have to if the number on the box corresponded to the number on people's machines...

So if I sell you a ruler that only has 12 inches marked on it for $5, and I sell somebody else a ruler that has 30 centimeters marked on it for $5, I've sold you less than the other guy for the same price? Because that's exactly what you're arguing.

Mr.Guvernment · Mar 16, 2009

i thought HD makers were the ones in the right and it was the OS companies that were calculating it wrong in the end?

petteyg359 · Mar 16, 2009

Mr.Guvernment said:
i thought HD makers were the ones in the right and it was the OS companies that were calculating it wrong in the end?

Hard drives have been sold as 1000MB per 1GB for well over a decade, yet Microsoft chooses to ignore this. I don't use Macs, so I can't say whether they display the correct base or not.

c627627 · Mar 16, 2009

I could do 30.48 cm worth of meausurin' on a 12'' ruler

I don't really have an emotional preference nor do I think about lawsuits or who's right & who's wrong.

Alls I know is that I have about 930GB to use on a drive that says 1TB on the box and that today there are drives where the discrepancy is the size of the original poster's entire hard drive. :screwy:

I think the majority of us just want them to do something to synchronize what it says on the the box with what it says on the screen

.

petteyg359 · Mar 16, 2009

Yet, you are DEAD WRONG. You have a full TB. You do not have a TiB. The drive is exactly as described on the label/box. 1.000 to 1.024. The difference between a GB (the drive's advertised size) and GiB (Windows displayed size, despite showing GB) is a measly 2.4%. All percentages get proportionately bigger as the base number gets bigger, though. Nobody is losing any space, people just refuse to accept the fact that a GB is a UNIT OF MEASURE. Just like inches, centimeters, etc. Arguing that something magically changes size just because you're using a different unit to measure it is stupid. See definition #2.

c627627 · Mar 16, 2009

Yes, I am wrong on the technical accuracy of who uses GB and who uses GiB.

But surely we all agree that the displayed size should be standardized for a simple reason that when we right click on a folder/drive in our OS - we need the same unit of measure to tell us which drive to buy to fit that number on, s'all.

Current way requires a calculator, there's no rational reason to be sitting around punching in numbers and doing conversions before knowing what we can fit onto the HD we wish to buy.

HD 120gb only shows 111gb

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