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Missing Hard drive space 8204

post #1 of 8
7/5/06 at 3:29am
Thread Starter 
Hi,

I recently did some repartioning on my 8204 (06/02) after removing Windows Vista. I looked at my partitions after I was done and I realized that the total hard drive capacity showing was less than the 120 Gb capacity:

C: 21.6 Gb
D: 46.0 Gb
E: 40.2 Gb
Hidden PQ: 3.06 Gb
------------
Total: 110.86 Gb

I was wondering if it is normal to be missing nearly 10 Gb form the hard drive. I understand some hard drive memory is used to organize partitions, etc. but this seems ecessive. Any help is appreciated.
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post #2 of 8
7/5/06 at 5:39am
You have fallen prey for hard drive manufacturers' false promises. They simply announce your hard drive size to be 120,000 million bytes, rather than 120 * 2^30 = 128,849,018,880 bytes.

120,000,000,000 bytes equals roughly 111.75 gigs the way it should be counted. In other words, you aren't really missing any hard drive space.

Hope this has been helpful.
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post #3 of 8
7/7/06 at 4:00am
the rest is used when u format.. like floppy disks were 2mb, but actually were only 1.44mb, i have the acer 5672 which promises 120gb too, and mine comes to approx 112gb, so yea it's normal...lol do you really have that hdd packed to the point you need that extra 8-10gb?? lol time for a usb hdd there getting cheaper... or even Seagate has just produced a 1 Terabyte hdd for laptops, for you individuals with real space needs..lmao
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post #4 of 8
7/10/06 at 12:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrLofberg
You have fallen prey for hard drive manufacturers' false promises. They simply announce your hard drive size to be 120,000 million bytes, rather than 120 * 2^30 = 128,849,018,880 bytes.

120,000,000,000 bytes equals roughly 111.75 gigs the way it should be counted. In other words, you aren't really missing any hard drive space.

Hope this has been helpful.


Could you possibly write that down in a format i could tap into the calculator please?

Many Thanks
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post #5 of 8
7/10/06 at 6:35pm
Are you talking about how he got that 111.75 GB as being the "real space?" This is how he did it:

1.2 * 10^11 / 2^30 = 111,758708953857421875

For example, if you had a hard drive that according to the sales man has a space of 500 GB your computer would see it as...

5*10^11 / 2^30 = 465,6612873077392578125 GB

Edit: I found an old example about the same problem. I hope it helps to understand where the missing space went. Clip taken from HERE.
Quote:
"My hard drive says it’s 2GB, but Windows is saying it’s 1.86GB. Where’d that 90MB of space go?" Well, that problem is all in the numbers. The makers of the hard drive count 1MB as 1,000,000 Bytes. Windows counts 1MB as 1,048,576 bytes, a difference of 48,576 bytes. That adds up when you are talking 2,000MB. Let’s do the math. Makers of hard drive says there are 2,000,000,000 bytes on the drive, so divide that by 1024 to get the number of kilobytes on the drive. Do that again to get the number of megabytes on the drive. Once more for the number of Gigabytes on the drive. You should get 1.862645149GB, or just 1.86GB, which is what Windows is thinking. That’s where your space went, in the numbers.
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post #6 of 8
7/13/06 at 11:16pm
I think you need to just accept how electronics work and not try to figure it out, either or take electronics
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post #7 of 8
7/14/06 at 9:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cobrajoker
I think you need to just accept how electronics work and not try to figure it out, either or take electronics

Not sure that memory/hard drive storage falls under "this is how electronics work"

It's basically a combination of companies making things simple (1000 vs real 1024 for calculations) and marketing trying to hype their products as much as possible...
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post #8 of 8
7/14/06 at 9:23am
I've always hated the approach that hard drive makers have used to calculate the total available space/size of the drive

Imagine if car makers were allowed to say things like "Rated for 100 miles per gallon*"

and then the disclaimer to read:
*1 mile = 500 feet
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