120 Gb or 114GB ?!

[Alpine]

I have buy a New HDD ( Maxtor Diamond Serie 9 120GB )

But once install .. i only have 114Gb ... Is that because the system file ( NTSF ?! ) ?

I have lost 6gig of space !!

[Stringent]

120GB is the unformatted capacity. Whenever you format a drive you always loose some space.

[~*McoreD*~]

It is a big issue. I also don't know what is exactly correct.

Overclockers.com.au says it is a marketing hype. That means 120GB is defined by the manufacturers as 120 Billion Bytes = 120, 000, 000, 000 Bytes = 111.75 Giga Bytes (as we define 1GB = 1024*1024*1024 Bytes). But this doesn't seem correct here, as you have got 114 GB.

Also there is another logic, which is I realise as more correct: as Flanderz said 120GB is the unformatted capacity, and when you format it as NTFS or FAT32 or FAT, some space is allocated. So now you have got only 114GB in NTFS (?). NTFS allocates more space than FAT32. If this logic is right: oneday when you format the HDD as FAT32, you should get more than 114GB then. We will see. To me it wasn't though. I had a 6.4GB HDD to test this out. For both NTFS and FAT32 I came up with 6.00GB in My Computer.

This makes more curious when this happens:
http://www.betaone.net/forums/index....T&f=43&t=18187
I was concluded as this happened because of the File System Allocation (NTFS). But File System cannot be the reason for the both situations. You can see in the pictures, the HDD is already detected as 6.00GB, and that 0.29GB difference is after that. I really don't know.

[Alpine]

thx for the info guys !!

I think i will wrote a letter to MAxtor to know why !!

[Alpine]

Here .. i Think I know why !!

For a Hdd company 1GB = 1000mb but for a OS ... 1GB = 1024mg !!

[KingCobra]

I had this same issue when the Intel 486/33's were new. The only difference is that the company I bought my (OLD) computer system from had it listed as such. I understand and have no problem with the HD manufacture listing the HD as size 120GB. Although, if say Gateway sells you a system and say it's a 120GB drive then it should be the total size after format.

$.02

[Sephiroth]

with NTFS, the drive needs room for the boot sector and the MFT (master filing table), the bigger the drive, the more room it allocates usually

my 80 gig drive after being partitioned into 2 partitions, one 20 gig, the other 60, both formatted as ntfs, ends up like this:

drive c: for windows = 18.6 gigs

drive d: for downloads, music, ghost images of c:, etc. etc. = 55.9 gigs

for a grand total of 74.5 gigs, so i lost 5.5 gigs, all of which is reserved for the boot sector and mft, if i formatted with fat32 it would be the same thing basically, the size i lost might be a bit different, but fat / fat32 still has a boot sector and file allocation table, so i would still never get 80 gigs formatted, i'm not sure how linux partitions handle data, but they probably wouldn't give you the full size either

and alpine you're right, 1 gig = 1,024 megs, 1 meg = 1,024 kb, 1 kb = 1024 bytes , people round it down to 1,000 so it's easier to remember, market, or whatever, but computers will always see it as 1024

[Alpine]

Sephiroth !!

I also have a 80gig .... and i have check how much i lost!
Same thing for me ... i have lost 5.5 gigs