Wester Digital 160GB 8MB only shows 148GB!

[andyjz]

Just installed with nothing on the drive it shows 149GB for disk size and 148GB for available space. I tried partition and the combination still adds up to 148GB. I have WinXP SP2. Please help!

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Welcome to the world of marketing.

Decimal vs. Binary:
For simplicity and consistency, hard drive manufacturers define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. This is a decimal (base 10) measurement and is the industry standard. However, certain system BIOSs, FDISK and Windows define a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes. Mac systems also use these values. These are binary (base 2) measurements.

To Determine Decimal Capacity:
A decimal capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,000,000,000 using base 10).

To Determine Binary Capacity:
A binary capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,073,741,824 using base 2).

 

[ribbon13]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1458662&enterthread=y

 

[ribbon13]

its all basically 1000 vs 1024 at different orders of magnitude.

 

[dragonballgtz]

Originally posted by: CalvinHobbes
Welcome to the world of marketing.

Decimal vs. Binary:
For simplicity and consistency, hard drive manufacturers define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. This is a decimal (base 10) measurement and is the industry standard. However, certain system BIOSs, FDISK and Windows define a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes. Mac systems also use these values. These are binary (base 2) measurements.

To Determine Decimal Capacity:
A decimal capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,000,000,000 using base 10).

To Determine Binary Capacity:
A binary capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,073,741,824 using base 2).

Here is the link

 

[Yanagi]

R

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Yanagi
R

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See sig.


Gigabyte = 1,000,000,000
Gibibyte = 1,073,741,824

 

[ribbon13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

 

[andyjz]

Thanks guys.....everything has to have a twist to it these days! If a computer uses binary (which it does last I knew) then report number is binary!!!