harddrive general question

celticfan11

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Joined
20 Jan 2003
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744
when you buy a 120 GIG harddrive
you format it and it is 111GB and a 60 will be 56 gig
etc why is this??? does this have to do with bits and byes or something?

also when you right clikc a file
it will say size of the file
then it will say size on disk
what is the difference between the 2?
 
File Allocation Tables and other indexing information is created during formatting, and takes up a small portion of the disk.

JJB
 
If 8 gigs is a small portion Im afraid to find out what large is :)
 
no....

it's just different viewpoint...

HD manufacturer: 1 gig = 1000 MB
Windows, everything else: 1 gig = 1024 MB
 
ig 1 gig =1024 mg
then 120 gigs would end up as more in windows not less
rite?
 
okay, hard drive manufacturer makes a 120 gb drive (120000 MB)

you install windows on it, windows wants to see how big it is in GB, so... 120000/1024 = 117.1875 GB

see it now?
 
Actual number of bytes on the disk:
120,000,000,000
and 1,000 bytes is 1KB in the strictest sense of the prefix "kilo".


But Windows says that 1024 bytes=1 kb. So Windows does this:

120,000,000,000/1024=117,187,500 bytes, or 117.1875 GB.

EDIT: DOH! Ya beat me! :p
 
actually, 120 GB is 120,000,000,000 bytes, and would show up as 120,000,000,000/1024/1024/1024 = 111.75GB
 
The "file size" vs. "size on disk" has to do with clusters. The disk is devided into clusters of a certain size, say 8kb. Only one file can be in one cluster, so if the file is smaller than 8k, there will be some wasted space.

So "file size" is the acctual file size, whereas "size on disk" is the file size plus the extra slack space.
 
Originally posted by celticfan11
read this HD are getting sued over this now
Feels a bit strange. I mean, the manufacturers have been counting like this for 20 years or so.

Not that anyone would notice before the disk became pretty large, >20GB or so. :)
 
LATE BREAKING NEWS ON THIS THREAD!

Seems 4 guys in LA have filed a suit against Dell, IBM, Gateway, etc. They are claiming damages for fraud because the companies' 120 gig HD is actually only 113 gig. They hope to take the suit to class action status.

I'd drop the link but can't find it now. Bummer.

I'm really excited, this means the companies will end up paying 100's of millions of dollars which will be put into a fund for distribution back to us all. Just like with the CD price fixing scam where we all DIDN'T get money back....................
 
Originally posted by LeeJend
this means the companies will end up paying 100's of millions of dollars which will be put into a fund for distribution back to us all. Just like with the CD price fixing scam where we all DIDN'T get money back....................
Oh brilliant. This means they have to pay tons of money we will never see any of and then have to increase their prices to compensate. Brilliant. :mad:
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
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