Hard Disk Capacity recognition

[chamika]

I have a Hitachi 160GB SATA hard disk on a Intel DG965SS motherboard. At the first XP installation, when I format the disk, it showed only 150GB outof 160GB. Can anyone help me with this problem? I'm so sure I havent done anything wrong doing this. Is there any alternative ways to get back my lost 10GB? Dont mind reformating the disk. Please help.

Removed bold text to make it easier to read.

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

There`s nothing wrong with the drive, it`s all to do with how the size of the drive is calculated.

Hitachi calculates the drive as 160gig(1000meg x 160). In reality, there`s 1024 meg to a gig and Windows calculates it at this. That`s why there`s a difference in the sizes.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

 

[AlbertLionheart]

You can sometimes get the 'missing' volume back by splitting the drive into more than 1 partition - but probably not worth the hassle of reinstalling everything. Better still, you could try a partition manager such as Paragon Partition Manager. This allows you to create partitions on the fly.

 

[chamika]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

There`s nothing wrong with the drive, it`s all to do with how the size of the drive is calculated.

Hitachi calculates the drive as 160gig(1000meg x 160). In reality, there`s 1024 meg to a gig and Windows calculates it at this. That`s why there`s a difference in the sizes.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

Thanks alot for your prompt information. So it seems even though Hitachi says it's 160Gb, in real world I will get only 150GB. Fine .. thanks again.

Information given to me was very helpful and thank you guys very much. It seems I dont have to bother reformating my drive & maybe I'll try again with partition software.

 

[SNGX1275]

From the datasheet for that drive:
GB equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity; accessible capacity
That is basically a complicated way of saying 1GB=1000MB

So what you have here is Hitachi saying 160GB, but what it really is is 160GB=1,600,000MB/REAL GB of 1024MB = 156.25GB

You aren't getting hosed on space, well I guess you are by about 6 gigs, but I bet its there.

 

[raybay]

The extra 6 are lost in formatting.

 

[chamika]

From the datasheet for that drive:
GB equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity; accessible capacity
That is basically a complicated way of saying 1GB=1000MB

So what you have here is Hitachi saying 160GB, but what it really is is 160GB=1,600,000MB/REAL GB of 1024MB = 156.25GB

You aren't getting hosed on space, well I guess you are by about 6 gigs, but I bet its there.

Thank you very much ... now it's very clear to me. Time for me to forget about that prob since it seems I haven't lost any disk space.

 

[SNGX1275]

The extra 6 are lost in formatting.

No thats not right either. I oversimplified and didn't catch it until your statement.

So what you really have to do then is take 1GB=1,000,000,000bytes according to manufacturer. So then take 160 times that to give you 160,000,000,000bytes. Then divide by 1024 to get it in KB, then 1024 to get MB, then 1024 one final time to give you GB. That gives 149.0116119384765625 GB. He is seeing 150, its correct.

Further Proof:

Those are 400Gigs and a 250Gigs.

Lets look at the math and see if Windows and the drives are showing the correct capacity:
1GB=1,000,000,000bytes starting point.
400,000,000,000bytes * 1kilobyte/1024bytes * 1megabyte/1024kilobytes * 1gigabyte/1024megabytes = 372.529GB
Windows Says: 30 + 100 + 242.61 = 372.61GB

1GB=1,000,000,000bytes starting point.
250,000,000,000bytes * 1kilobyte/1024bytes * 1megabyte/1024kilobytes * 1gigabyte/1024megabytes = 232.83GB
Windows Says: 4 + 228.88 = 232.88GB

 

[chamika]

Wonderful SNGX .. the way you explain things are just perfect. Thanks.