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Size of Hard Drive

post #1 of 15
6/19/04 at 2:38am
Thread Starter 
Just a quickie....how come when I bought my computer, it said 40GB, but if I check the "properties" of my C drive, it says total is 34GB? I don't have another drive (like a D drive or anything). Is it just that windows xp takes up the rest or something??
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post #2 of 15
6/19/04 at 2:39am
no this is an issue with converison. marketing assumes 1000 bytes = 1 kb which it is not, it is actually 1024 bytes = 1 kb. So a 40 gig hard drive is 40 billion bytes
but if you divide that by 1024 twice (as 1mb = 1024kb) you will get something around 37 actual gigabytes. Just a dumb marketing thing.
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post #3 of 15
6/19/04 at 2:41am
oh and you need to divide again to get gigabytes, same margin of error there.
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post #4 of 15
6/19/04 at 2:43am
Thread Starter 
Now that is just crazy! I kind of feel ripped off!! Oh well....34 should be enough considering all I do is surf/word processing etc..
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post #5 of 15
6/19/04 at 2:44am
i dunno where that 3 gigs went, are you looking at space free?
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post #6 of 15
6/19/04 at 2:47am
an additional note: if you haven't noticed already this effect increases the higher capacity goes...

edit: and the reason why marketing doesn't report "accurate" hard drive sizes is because it looks awkward if they say it's a 37.25 gig hard drive.
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post #7 of 15
6/19/04 at 2:51am
Thread Starter 
What do you mean "divide again"??
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post #8 of 15
6/19/04 at 2:52am
the formula i gave you will get you megabytes, you need to divide by 1024 again to get gigabytes (1024 mb = 1 gig)
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post #9 of 15
6/19/04 at 3:32am
Aside from marketting, the rest of the "missing" space is the space which is "lost" when you actually format the drive so that it can be used.
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post #10 of 15
6/19/04 at 3:34am
depending on the manufacturer, part of the drive may be set a side for a back up image. I know IBM and some other major OEMs do this.
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post #11 of 15
6/19/04 at 3:49am
uh no you don't lose space when you format, that's a myth.
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post #12 of 15
6/19/04 at 4:07am
Thread Starter 
So basically you're saying that I should just leave it alone? That it is as it should be?

I don't want to mess with my new computer...well...not with out asking you guys first!!
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post #13 of 15
6/19/04 at 4:10am
it sounds like that's the way it should be. I suspect the IBM recovery stuff is on a hidden/inactive partition, that's why you don't see it as a second drive.
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post #14 of 15
6/19/04 at 4:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by turanuk
uh no you don't lose space when you format, that's a myth.
It's not lost, but less is measured as being there. Or maybe it just doesn't like me and hides.
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post #15 of 15
6/19/04 at 4:49pm
The hidden partition is actually an integrated part of the BIOS.... something about being part of the ATA-6 specifications
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