Newb question: How much is 160 GB after everything?

K

Kuo

Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2001
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641
As the topic says.

If I buy a 160 GB, how much actual space will I get by the end of the day?

Running in WinXP on a PCI Controller card. Use it's default allocation size (I don't actually know what it is) and 1 large partition.

Approximate of course. How do I actually do this calculation?
 
My new 160GB drive reads as 149 GB.

Edit:

Here's how to calculate:

160GB = 160,000,000,000 Bytes (by the drive manufacturer)

(((160,000,000,000 / 1024) / 1024) / 1024) = 149GB (actual size)
 
Wait, so when windows formats the drive using NTFS and stuff, it doesn't take away from available space?
 
Originally posted by Kuo
Wait, so when windows formats the drive using NTFS and stuff, it doesn't take away from available space?
Click to expand...

Only 8 megs if you're using a dynamic disk.
 
Ok, so... I bought the 160, put it in, and actually created 1 primary partition of 10 gb and 1 extended partition w/ a logical drive of everything else.

It came out to 10 + 118 = 128 GB

Now, I heard about the 48 bit addressing problem, but I'm running this drive off a PCI Controller card - and don't those handle devices like a SCSI card does? And thus I shouldn't have to worry about any size barrier?

In which case, why am I only getting 128 GB? Both partitions were formatted using NTFS and the default settings provided by Computer Management in WinXP.

[Edit] It appears that I didn't read the sticked post in this forum well enough. "OR a 48bit LBA capable IDE controller card (or IDE RAID Card)"

I didn't know it had to be specific or anything. I'm using the controller card that WD provides w/ their 160s - shouldn't that be 48bit LBA capable? Is there some setting in my BIOS i have to activate or something?

[Edit] On further reading of the Microsoft db, it says WinXP SP1 should have 48bit enabled. But I checked my driver version #, and it doesn't match the ones that have it enabled.

My question now - if I enable it on a drive that I've been writing data to, what happens to the additional found space? Do I have to make it into another partition? Or can it magically merge into the extended partition? (the 118GB one)
 
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