160GB HHD format?

[Denvers Dawgs]

I just used WinXP Home to format a new 160GB HHD. After it was formatted there was 149GB of space left. Does that sound right? Should I lose 11GB during format?

[888888]

160,000,000,000/1024/1024/1024=~149
(bytes)________________________(GB)

[rallynavvie]

Werd. 160GB on manufacturer packaging assumes 1GB = 1000MB and 1MB = 1000KB when the OS sees 1MB as 1024KB and a GB as 1024MB. That's the explanation for the math 888888 did above anyway. It gets really pronounced with larger drives.

[ViRaL1]

They're going to have to standardize on some format for hard drive storage classification. If you 'lose' 11GB out of 160, that means you'll 'lose' about 27 out of a 400GB drive. When terabyte drives hit, you'll start 'losing' upwards of 50GB on a drive. We need either a better convention or a more efficient storage system.

[Capmaster]

Maybe while they're at it they can start truthfully labeling DVD media too ...with "4.38GB" like they should have done from day one :P

[NickSaunders]

It is very misleading to say the least

[Roundabout]

Reminds me of the "amplifier wars" in the 1970's, where they used to have a dozen different ways to rate the output of an amp. Remember those Lloyd's brand stereos, with the 8-track in front and a turntable on top? They'd rate them with a bogus made-up rating like "PMPO" (peak music power output) of something ridiculous like 200 watts. In reality, they were more like 5 RMS watts per channel, with 5% THD (total harmonic distortion).

Other long-gone brands like Capehart, who used to make console stereos back then, would have a sticker on the front exclaiming "300 WATTS!".

Actually true, that's how much AC wattage the unit used.

Very misleading, and intentionally so.

Today, the same is true for hard drives. They need to standardize the ratings so people aren't confused. They should use the actual formatted capacity and be done with it. They certainly wouldn't get as many complaints that way.

[Denvers Dawgs]

So the 149GB is correct?......If so, that blows.....

[glockjs]

yup it's correct.

btw your avatar offends me, raidernation for life

[waheed]

Roundabout wrote:

Reminds me of the "amplifier wars" in the 1970's, where they used to have a dozen different ways to rate the output of an amp. Remember those Lloyd's brand stereos, with the 8-track in front and a turntable on top? They'd rate them with a bogus made-up rating like "PMPO" (peak music power output) of something ridiculous like 200 watts. In reality, they were more like 5 RMS watts per channel, with 5% THD (total harmonic distortion).

Other long-gone brands like Capehart, who used to make console stereos back then, would have a sticker on the front exclaiming "300 WATTS!"

So whats changed. PMPO ratings are still used even today by various manufacturers, now we're seeing ratings like 2000 watts on some low end speaker systems

though i prefer manufaturers whom rate their equipment in RMS (Root Mean Sqaure).

[stalker11]

I recently got a "200gb" harddrive with only 186gb available, that's a cool 14gb, not too far off of my old 20gb harddrive. Of course 200gb sounds better than 186gb right. I first noticed this little scam back in the 3.5" floppy days when 1.44mb disks were 1.38mb each. The only recent media that seems legit are cds, 650mb or 700mb meant 650mb or 700mb respectively. I wonder how ZIP and JAZ disks worked, never jumped on that bandwagon. It's optical or nothing when it comes to external storage media for me.

[gmatov]

Won't a 700 MB CD hold 800 MB of VCD/SVCD?

[stalker11]

Yeah, well, it will hold 700mb of computer data which is what I was refering to. It will hold 80minutes of VCD/SVCD data but VCD and SVCD are recorded more like an audio cd, I think it had something to do with error reduction of some sort that wasn't necessary for audio cds or vcds. Either way, the point is that they say they hold 700mb of data and they do and that I'm getting screwed out of a good 26gb combined with my 3 harddrives.

[vitualis]

@ George: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/135642.php

And yes, the 650 MB and 700 MB capacities for DATA CDs are "real" megabytes rather than the "weasel" megabytes of advertisers.

Regards.

[gmatov]

Michael,

I don't need the link. Recall all the discussions from many months ago about this same silliness?

And a Data disk, when checked under the "Properties" tab, will show, say, 650 MB, "Size on Disk", 690 MB. Due to the folder arrangement, the 32 KB clusters, etc.

I have 2 160's on this machine, via Promise controller. They read as 149 GB when detected. One upstairs is on the board IDE, machine boots, it comes up 163 GB.

It doesn't really matter, if they showed as true 160, they'd probably charge a couple bucks more.

And, too, the overhead with such a humungous FAT eats up useable space. I think I have something like 2 million clusters on these drives, as seen when you run some of the maintenance programs.

Reboot into DOS and do a dir on a drive. Total allocation units for that drive or partition will be in the millions. Every cluster has a hex address, so there goes a little more of that 160 GB, in overhead.

Hell, I never even worried about this when I was using 540 MEGABYTE, and smaller, drives. I think the smallest I still have, still functional, is a 170 MB.

On another note, same vein, has anybody bought a new Seagate, and do you know if they're more realistic in their sizing? The ones at CompUSA have "New. 5 Year Warranty" or "Now with 5 year warranty." 160 for 60 bucks after 50 or 60 buck rebate.

I just lost my main drive, 100 GB. 3 year, still under warranty, but can't get the data off it, even with EZ Recovery. Need a controller from a 100 Max to try to get it off. I'd even be willing to buy another 100 to swap, if I can find one, but don't think I've seen one for years. Bastard size, now go from 80 to 120.

Ah, well.

Cheers,

George

[Garibaldi]

Werd. 160GB on manufacturer packaging assumes 1GB = 1000MB and 1MB = 1000KB when the OS sees 1MB as 1024KB and a GB as 1024MB. That's the explanation for the math 888888 did above anyway. It gets really pronounced with larger drives.

Maybe while they're at it they can start truthfully labeling DVD media too ...with "4.38GB" like they should have done from day one

Yeah... maybe they will finally label stuff to the actual size that it is. But if they can make it look like more than it really is, they will. I was disappointed to find that my 160 GB is only 145 GB after the HP Recovery Partition takes a chunk out too.

[ViRaL1]

Next you'll all want to put 2MB on a 3.5" floppy. I don't see what the big deal since most if not all MFRs are using 1000MB as 1GB. Most of them list on their web site which method they use for determining how many MB in a GB. It could be worse. Imagine if processors were based on the same system. :P

'This sux, my P4 3.2GHz only runs at 3.051
(I'm starting to wonder if AMD is already doing this).

P.S. - There's always compression

[stalker11]

By my count it would be 2.976ghz, but who's counting. Anywho, all I'm saying is that there are some dumb people out there that don't understand the system that are getting screwed without knowing it. We at least know we're getting screwed here. What's better?

[ViRaL1]

If it was one or two companies I might feel like I'm getting screwed, but I always assume it's a rough estimate. It's like buying gas in a way, some people will drive a mile or two more for an extra cent savings, but at the same time assume they're paying $1.49 per gallon when it's really only .001 away from $1.50.

(I wonder what genius came up with that concept. I can't recall seeing it anywhere other than gas.)

Just curious, how did you get 2.9xx?

I did 3,200,000,000 / 1024 / 1024.

NM, I didn't divide out again. I got 2.980 this time.

[gmatov]

Giga HERTZ is actually billions of cycles per second.

Although it is not REALLY 1 billion per giga. Too fast to count, you see.

Unlike binary with gigabytes, 1024 times, etc.

Then, too, 2 identical drives may format to different capacities, as the formatting checks for bad clusters and marks them as unuseable, so as to give different capacities.

Flip of the coin.

Cheers,

George

[vitualis]

BTW, the old advertising for "2 MB" 3.5" floppy discs aren't entirely misleading. You can actually format standard 3.5" floppies up to 2 MB in capacity and it will be read natively on most versions of MS-DOS/Windows.

WinImage can do this.

Back in the MS-DOS days, there was a fantastic program called 2M-GUI (or something like that). It would allow you to format floppies in non-standard ways (i.e., you would need a boot driver to access them) to get not only higher capacity, but faster read time. This was NOT through compression. It worked by doing something funky at a hardware level.

Those were the days... There is nothing more satisfying than punching an extra hole in 720 K floppies and then formatting it with 2M-GUI to around 2 MB capacity. With Verbatim discs, this always worked 100%. I still remember the time when 3.5" floppies were so expensive that my Dad used to buy them individually...

Regards.

[ViRaL1]

I bought a punch at a computer show 10+ years ago. Man, that rocked!:P I'm aware of the differences in nomenclature between Hz and Bytes, I was just making a point that we'd feel the pinch more on processors. On a side note, where is AMD coming up with their number scale these days? What exactly is an Athlon64 3500+ compararable to?

[vitualis]

I have always disagreed with the Athlon "PR" ratings. They don't mean anything. If you are comparing it with a P4 processor, that has long since lost meaning considering there are 3-4 different cores/types. Even within the Athlon family there are clear gaps in performance.

e.g., Athlon 64 3200+ vs AthlonXP 3200+

The A64 gives superior performance on just about every test.

Regards.

[ViRaL1]

Interestingly enough, the socket 754 AthlonXP and Athlon64 both run at 2.2GHz while the socket 939 Athlon64 only runs at 2.0GHz.

[sabercats]

If you format hard drive using windowsXP , then your hard drive go back to 149GB, that' s right. To use it w/o losing any space, you have to use the CD boot disk from the hard drive, I think you have Maxtor Drive, just use Maxtor CD and format it as Customzie, then it will get a full 160GB . Then you use it to install winXP or for second hard drive. I have 2 of 160 GB Maxtor, and I know that . I learned it from my harddrives

[gastorgrab]

Some of the loss could be attributed to the fact that a protected file system was used. - (NTFS)



The loss is less when FAT32 is used, but ya can't do 160GB drives with FAT32.

[Capmaster]

Another thing that will affect available HD capacity is cluster size.

Unfortunately the more files you have, the more capacity you waste because of cluster sizes. If a HD has 16K clusters and you write a 1K file, the entire 16K will be used, or appear to be used. It's called slack space.

Use large clusters like 64K and your video work will be faster, but you will lose a lot of capacity with smaller files. Use a smaller cluster size like 4K and you'll waste less space, but your video work will suffer because now it reads 4K at a time and not 64K. It's a tradeoff