View Full Version : 200 gig HD showing up as 186 gigs w/ 70megs used...wtf?
Murkon
03-30-2004, 07:37 PM
Alright so I just installed my new Seagate 200 gig HD. It's set as primary slave.
I ran the disk utility that came on a CD with the drive. Set it to 100% alocation, and it formatted it and all that good stuff.
Well now it's showing up as only a 186gb drive and "used space" is 70.3 megabytes.
Wtf is going on?
How come it's only showing up as 186 gigs and how come it's saying 70.3 megs is used up on it?
Help please :(
:confused:
CoolEthan
03-30-2004, 07:42 PM
BIOS limitation is preventing it to address beyound the 186 so you have two options, either try to update your bios or you have to buy a special adapter card for pci that allows it to present the hard drive in a format that surpasses that limiation. 70 megs being used for the partition information and the "table of contents"...200gigs is a lot of to keep track of.
Murkon
03-30-2004, 07:58 PM
Man, I need to update my BIOS but I don't own a floppy drive anymore, lol
Anyone know if there's a way to update BIOS w/o a floppy drive on A7N8X Deluxe 2.0?
pr0pensity
03-30-2004, 08:08 PM
For drive companies, MB == 1000000 bytes
For the OS, MB == 1048576 bytes
200000000000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 == 186.264
I'm a bit tired of seeing this one.
its got nothing to do w/ the bios, its that windows measures hd storage differently (correctly) from hard drive companies.
guito13
03-30-2004, 08:15 PM
Originally posted by Murkon
Anyone know if there's a way to update BIOS w/o a floppy drive on A7N8X Deluxe 2.0?
There should be a utility that came with the MOBO called ASUS update ... it lets you get the most recent bios and flash it right from windows :)
ilkka
03-30-2004, 08:26 PM
Originally posted by pr0pensity
For drive companies, MB == 1000000 bytes
For the OS, MB == 1048576 bytes
200000000000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 == 186.264
I'm a bit tired of seeing this one. It's not the users' fault. The computer industry should start using the proper terminology already.
MB does not equal 1048576 bytes. It just doesn't. 1048576 bytes is a MiB.
CoolEthan
03-30-2004, 08:29 PM
I see, i know there are bios limitations on hard drive sizes, and thank you propensity for that information, i had forgotten that. And thank you for the one liner at the end...
stumpy
03-30-2004, 08:38 PM
It's not the users' fault. The computer industry should start using the proper terminology already.
I agree, it didn't matter as much when the drives were smaller (ex my 8 gig drive always showed up as 7.85) but when you get that big of a hard drive, the difference isn't that small anymore ;)
Murkon
03-30-2004, 09:02 PM
My apologies if I posted a question that has already been posted thousands of times. As you know, the search feature is turned off.
Well, I guess losing some space you buy is just part of it, right? I'll have to deal.
Appreciate all the info everyone! Thanks!
blizzah
03-30-2004, 09:34 PM
my 30 gig hd shows up as only 27.7
angrybusdriver
03-30-2004, 10:08 PM
Originally posted by Murkon
My apologies if I posted a question that has already been posted thousands of times. As you know, the search feature is turned off.
Well, I guess losing some space you buy is just part of it, right? I'll have to deal.
Appreciate all the info everyone! Thanks!
You didn't lose any. It's not like someone else who bought a 200GB hdd has more space than you do. Don't sweat it.
Bmr4life
03-30-2004, 10:58 PM
funny thing is I have 120 maxtors and 120 gig western digitals. The maxtors show up as 114.49GB and the WDs show up as 111.79GB. Someone explain the difference there please.
ilkka
03-30-2004, 11:56 PM
Originally posted by Bmr4life
funny thing is I have 120 maxtors and 120 gig western digitals. The maxtors show up as 114.49GB and the WDs show up as 111.79GB. Someone explain the difference there please. The WD is 120 Gbytes as expected. The Maxtors are a bit bigger, for whatever reason.
djnes
03-31-2004, 12:05 AM
Originally posted by pr0pensity
For drive companies, MB == 1000000 bytes
For the OS, MB == 1048576 bytes
200000000000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 == 186.264
I'm a bit tired of seeing this one.
Amen to that one. This is one of the many things on here considered "common knowledge", much like the fact that people need oxygen to breathe.
qb4ever
03-31-2004, 12:06 AM
My notebooks 6.40gb fujitsu registers at a 5.57gb
losing 830mb
"MiB" is bullshit.
A real megabyte is 2^20 bytes. A real gigabyte is 2^30 bytes. All storage capacities and all bandwidths should be measured in bytes per second.
Examples of bullshit:
Hard drive fake gigabytes (10^30 bytes is not a gigabyte)
Modem, "broadband", and Ethernet speeds (should be measured in bytes per second)
CD and DVD drives talking about "4X", "8X", etc; confusing for a number of reasons
When people confuse "B" and "b" or think they can get away with talking about "K/s", they're being morons.
Ice Czar
03-31-2004, 03:53 PM
Binary vs Decimal Measurement (http://www.pcguide.com/intro/fun/bindec-c.html)
and there is loss to filesystem overhead as well
which varies with the filesystem you adopt
(FAT16, Fat32, NTFS, Ext2FS, Ext3, Reiser, JFS, UFS, SFS, FFS, AFS)
see Alternative Filesystems in the Advanced HDD Issues (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=485217) Sticky Thread
all in all, it roughly averages to 10% between the manufacturers stated Decimal, and the OS binary measurement after formatting
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