Maxtor 120gb Space

[WorldWarGeneral]

I just installed a new Maxtor 120gb hard drive. Installation seemed to go okay, but when I go to My Computer, it says the total space is 114gb. On my 20gb drive, the total space was 18gb. I assumed the "lost" 2gb was for formatting info, partition info, etc. But why am I missing 4gb now? Is it just that higher-capacity drives take more space for partition/formatting info?

 

[Taurus]

harddrive manufacturers sorta trick us. it goes like this:

they say 120gb = 1,000,000,000 bytes (1,000 mb)

normal 120gb (under windows) = 1,073,741,824 bytes (1024mb)

so you have all 120 billion bytes on your hd... but they only equal 114 real gigabytes.

 

[WorldWarGeneral]

Oh, okay. That makes sense. I feel a little cheated, but I suppose I won't miss the 4gb for a while. 114gb is a lot to fill.

 

[Taurus]

yeah, all drives are like that. you're actually missing 6gb. and 2gb on your 20gb for the same reason. formatting/partitioning tables only take up a couple of mb, at the most.

 

[Zedric]

Originally posted by taurus
so you have all 120 billion bytes on your hd... but they only equal 114 real gigabytes.

Actually it's only 111 "real" gigabytes, so you have 3 gigs extra!
Isn't that nice?