Max. size hard drive

I have a 40G hard drive on Win 98 and it only recognizes 37G. Why? Thanks

 

The Drive is a 40GB - what you are now seeing is the Formated capacity.

The MBR - Partition tables and directory structure all take up space, even before windows is installed.

This is normal.

 

While the MBR and FAT do use some space - it is unlikely that they are consuming 3GB of the HD.

Some of that 'missing' space is attributed to how a GB is defined. Hard disk manufacturers generally equate 1,000,000,000 bytes = 1GB whereas the actual number is closer to 1,073,741,824 bytes =1GB.

The difference may not seem significant until you start adding up multiple gigabytes like a 40GB drive - now that difference of 73,741,824 X 40 = 2,949,672,960 bytes or 2.7 GB

The HD makers use a more liberal definition of the Gigabyte for marketing purposes - a 40GB sounds and sells a lot better than a 37 GB drive. So the MBR, FAT and directory structure have used some of the drive space but the rest of that 3GB hasn't vanished - it was never there to begin with.

Regards,

ICE