i've just put a dos partition and set it active on a 40.8gb hard drive, installed WinXP and windows tells me the capacity is 37.2gb. Is this right or have i done something wrong ?
Thanks.
stumuzz. :confused:

I believe that is due to the fact that hard drive manufactures round done the size's of GB to 1,000,000,000Bytes when the true sixe is 1,073,741,824(1024B=1KB, 1024KB=1MB,1024MB=1GB). So your drives true size is 37.9GB. I guess they due this so the drive capacity comes to a round number.

*note are you sure your drive isn't a 40G as this would translate to 37.2G

I'll have to dig out the paperwork but i'm sure its a 40.8 or 40.6gb
stumuzz.:confused:

The missing 8 mb is because of the way dos (fdisk) partitions large disks. You always lose the 8mb if you use dos to format the hard disks. I had the same problem with all 3 of my hard disks. Even partition magic coul dnot take care of this problem. The only way I figured out to get rid of this screw up is to use the disk management tool in administrative tools to configure the hard disk.

he's actually short 700MB if its supposed to be a 40.8G (37.9 -37.2).

As already mention the loss M in your FAT HD partition is
from the manufacturer definition of M =1000 instead of 1024

and
secondly FAT32 partition smallest possible cluster size is 8k

compare to NTFS which can go as low as 512bytes..

if you are using Partition magic 7.0 and above ..
try running it without actually performing the changeover
and now
check the Megabytes in NTFS and FAT cluster size or ach of your partition you will see the missing M space

FAT16 is the worse of the lot!

[img:171dd09e3b]http://kean.orcon.net.nz/jupflag1.gif[/img:171dd09e3b]

I found the paperwork ,
it's a Seagate U6 Series 40.8GB Hard Drive 5,400rpm 8.6ms 2Mb ATA 100 bought from Novateck.com, here's where it gets tricky.
the sale invoice has the right code but says hdd 40gb 5400 2mb ata 100 ver.u6. and the label on the harddrive says 40gb
notice the (40gb) I did phone Novateck a few day after installing it to querry the size and they said its is a 40.8gb.
well i took there word, this all happened back in november.
stumuzz.:mad: :confused: :eek:

Beats me !! , alll my drives behave the same , I think its just the way Windoze reports the size , If you click on the properties for your 40g drive you see the pie chart and it should show the capacity as 40,800,000,000 bytes or thereabouts , alongside it will probably say about 38gb. I think you will just have to live with it.
According to my book thu cluster size will be 32k in fat32
1-7gb =4k , 8-16gb =8k , 16-32gb = 16k , <32gb = 32k.
I have split my 40gb drive into 6 partitions . This allows me
to try different configurations quite easily + limits wasted space.

All drives that I can find on Seagates web page are 40G not 40.8G. Also here is a quote from there page to clear up the capacity issue.

Capacity:
Capacity is the amount of data that the drive can store, [b:238a8a40da]after formatting[/b:238a8a40da]. Most disc drive companies, including Seagate, calculate disc capacity based on the assumption that 1 megabyte = 1000 kilobytes and 1 gigabyte=1000 megabytes.

Had a look at there site and found this :

ST340810A Configuration and Specifications
: : : : : : : 40.8 GB 5400 rpm 8.9 ms 1023 256 63 3408102 SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY LLC 1-800-SEAGATE http://www.seagate.com (C)opyright 2001 ST-340810A (U Series 6 40810, Ultra ATA/100) ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º REAR VIEW º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ J2 40 pin I/O Cable Connection ³ pin-20 removed ³ ÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ ³ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÑÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ1Í/ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ TOP (HDA) ͵::::::::::ú::::::::1³ : : : : ³ 0 0 0 0
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...st340810a.html
Size: 31619 bytes

stumuzz.:confused: