Laptop hard drive capacities wrong

[bruincal]

I have a 15GB Toshiba laptop hard drive. When I formatted it and checked the capacity in PartitionMagic 7, it states that 14MB were already used up. But I had just formatted it in PartitionMagic, so that's impossible. Are those 14MB of bad sectors? When I select Info in PartitionMagic, it says 0 bytes that are bad.
Another friend also has a 15GB Toshiba laptop hard drive, and when he formats his in Windows XP, the total size comes out to only 11GB. But also, his drive reports no bad sectors in PartitionMagic.

Do laptop drives automatically cut down their total storage by "hiding" the bad sectors?
Thanks!

 

[Motero]

One more time..........

read it here

 

[bruincal]

Thanks, I already know about how bits are counted towards the total.

However, I was asking if anyone knew why I have 14mb already used up right after a format.
Also, why my friend's hard drive has 4GB's used up right after a format and only 11GB usable.

 

[amdskip]

Partitioning and setting everything up does take the 14mb. Your friends hard drive may be right but it sounds like the partition size may be slightly messed up.