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They're taking advantage of their customer's ignorance and essentially telling them something they know is not true--which is the classic definition of a lie.
Well, both the 120 and the 114 figures are correct. It is a 120Gig drive and Windows is telling you that you have 114Gigs usable user space available.
When the drive is setup for use there is space set aside to number the sectors, space for check codes, etc. Out of 120Gigs there is 114 left for the user after the drive is setup by the format program.
These "dead" to the user codes are necessary for Windows to locate the sectors and verify that the data was written and read correctly by generating checksum coding which is written on the hard disk along with the data. The larger the drive the more space you lose. Be glad those codes are there. Saves a lot of problems.
Discrepancy Between Reported Capacity and Actual Capacity
Many customers are confused when their operating system reports, for example, that their new ST310240A 10.24-Gbyte hard drive is reporting only 9.85 Gbytes in usable capacity.
Several factors may come into play when you see the reported capacity of a disc drive. Unfortunately there are two different number systems which are used to express units of storage capacity; binary, which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes, and decimal, which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1000 bytes. The storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal. Even though in binary you have more bytes, the decimal representation of a Gbyte shows greater capacity. In order to accurately understand the true capacity of your disc drive, you need to know which base unit of measure (binary or decimal) is being used to represent capacity. Another factor that can cause misrepresentation of the size of a disc drive is BIOS limitations. Many older BIOS are limited in the number of cylinders they can support.
The Seagate article says "The storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal." Well, this became the defacto standard (varying from the binary standard which applies in all cases of digital data) when one drive manufacturer decided to ignore the binary standard and the other manufacturers decided it was easier to do the same rather than try to educate the public. That's when they all decided to vary from the true numbers.
Digital data storage was measured in binary numbers for about 40 years that I know of--until the drive manufacturers decided to pervert the meaning. When one applies the prefix Kilo, Mega or Giga, those prefixes applied to any number make it, by definition, binary--not decimal.
Excerpt of the definition of Kilobyte:
Quote:
When we talk about a kilobyte, we usually refer to it as a thousand bytes. However, keep in mind that computers use the binary system (not the decimal system) to work with data. Therefore, a kilobyte really refers to 2 to the power of 10 bytes, which is 1,024 bytes. (Remember, 2 to the power of 10 is the same as 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2, which equals 1024.)
You can use the following multipliers to convert binary terms to decimal:
KiloBinary X 1.024 = decimal 1,000.
MegaBinary X 1.049 = decimal 1,000,000.
GigaBinary X 1.074 = decimal 1,000,000,000.
With that in mind, your 120 Gigabyte drive would equal 120 X .931 = 111.72 Gigs on the decimal system so you actually got a more than fair shake. They gave you a full 114 Gigs! Then as Giles points out, there is a space reserved for maintenance which usually runs about 7 megs or there abouts. Peanuts, to be sure and worth the burden.
Cheers.
Last edited by Zephyr; 11th February 2003 at 08:03.
I appreciate everyone's input. As it Turns out, someone else I know installed the exact same drive and only shows 109gigs. Apparently I am doing better than I thought. I was just thinking that I had done something wrong. Thanks again.
No kidding?
Thanks
