(my hardrive: 80gb segate baracuda)
Its my first time to use partition magic 8 and I was unaware of what i was doing...

during my first run i tried to create a new partition on my hardrive...it was then that i noticed a gray icon below my main partition---it says unallocated..not knowing what the heck "unallocated partition" was i continued on creating a partition.(ignoring the unallocated one)...everything went fine..then suddenly i decided to merge the partition i created (it was roughly about 30gb)..again the process was a success.

but the one thing that bothers me now is that my hardrive is not showing up a full 80gb of hardisk space (even in partition magic my drive only displays 74.5gb)...there was no hidden partition to be found what so ever...my question is were did the rest of my hardrive space go???? does it have something to do with the unallocated space i ignored before i created a new partition???

I was playing around with partition magic then suddenly i found this resizing cluster option so i went there the check what it was about...there i saw a bunch of wasted clusters...i tried to sum it up...and its around 5 +/- gb. is this my missing partition???

From within My Computer, if you Right click on the drive and choose properties, what does it state there?

I have a Maxtor 80GB thats

Capacity : 81,948,430,336 but also, 76.3GB

You sure you're just not confused by the whole :-

1MB = 1024Kb etc..

There's nothing wrong!!!

I can't remember the explanation for it, but believe it or not, floppy disks have the same strange size difference.

In terms of hard disk space, If I remember my figures correctly, you loose about 0.4 GB of space per 10GB of the stated size...

eg, a 10 GB drive is acctually about 9.6 GB in terms of usable space. You can take that as read if you like, but I dare say that someone here can remember the full reason and figures for it.

Gladly,

1024Bytes = 1kiloByte (1kB)
1024kB = 1MegaByte (1MB)
1024MB = 1GigaByte (1GB)
1024GB = 1TeraByte (1TB)

Could you please post in more detail why a 10 GB drive is only 9.6GB useable? I already knew the 8 bits=1byte, 1024 bytes=1KB, etc, etc.

But I can't remember how partition sizes etc go together with that information resulting in a 10 GB drive only having 9.6 GB of useable space.

9.6something... x 1.024 = 9,830

so it prolly works out about right..

How come my drive shows up only as 80,023,715,840???

Hey guys you sure that the dispcrepancy on my drive space isnt caused by the wasted cluster space that partition magic is showing????

Hard Drive makers says 1 gig is 1 gig, the os uses 1 gig as 1024mg. Thats why their is a difference in the size that the os reports.

oops not mg, 1024MB

Do you think its safe if i try to resize my cluster with partition magic???

Don't mess about unnecessarily with any parameters you find in whatever program. Best leave them alone. It is cheaper to buy another HD than having to reinstall/repair a running installation, just because you want the last GB out of it.

You aren't going to gain any additional space by doing it, you'll only increase/decrease the amount of space that is used by chunks of data. More info on cluster size can be found HERE

a computer is ultimately a counting machine. nothing more nothing less. it's all ones and zeros.

drive sizes and actual kilobytes are defined in terms of binary numbers and not regular base ten as you are used to. unfortunately hard drive manufacturers dont use this same convention *they want to make it sound like more, obviously*

2^10 = 1024 = 1 kb
2^20 = 1048576 = 1 mb
2^30 = 1073741824 = 1 gb

so you would think your 10 gb hard drive can hold 10737418240 bytes but like i said, they dont name like this.
a "10 gb" hard drive is really 9.76gb as someone previously said.

so take your 74.5 gb and multiply by 1.024^3 and boom you have 80gb (we're working in terms of gb now so it's 3 not 30). your HD didn't just disappear or anything.

if i remember correctly *and i do* someone filed a lawsuit against some HD companies because they said it was false advertisement to label drives the way they do.

Sorry to press the point,
but I have been doing the maths and I think that partition magic 7 has lost a bit, should a new sata 120gig seagate show as 111gb.

I only used partition 7 as I just could not get disc manager to load.
It just got so far and stayed as a blinking cursor for ever.
Before I use it any tips appreciated.
Thanks all

yeah... i think thats right to be honest

look at the factor i posted in my last reply.

111 * 1.024^3 = 119.1853

i'm willing to bet the discrepancy is that it doesn't show EXACTLY 111 gb, probably more like 111.75

I just suppose i didnot want to believe it
Thanks :grinthumb

One other query?

do different manufacturers calculate their drives differently.
I was just looking at the sizes shown on this pc.

c maxtor 40 gig 37.2

D +F maxtor 120gig 19.5 +94.9 =114.4

K seagate 120gig = 111

odd I say