XP showing reduced size hard Drive capacity ??

[Bare]

Just installed a 80 gig Drive.. XP shows it as 74.53 Gb's..
Why? and more importantly how can I get this # a bit
bigger?

[Danny Blue]

That's exactly what it should show. It's the math. Live with it.

"Bare" > wrote in message
...
> Just installed a 80 gig Drive.. XP shows it as 74.53 Gb's..
> Why? and more importantly how can I get this # a bit
> bigger?

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

Windows is accurately reporting the true size of your hard drive.

1 Kb = 1024 bytes
1 Mb = 1024 x 1024 Kb = 1,048,576 bytes
1 Gb = 1024 x 1024 Mb = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Hence, 74.53 x 1,073,741,824 = 80,025,978,142.72 bytes, which
your hard drive's manufacturer is rounding off and calling 80 Gb.
This tactic (trying to redefine the gigabyte an even 1,000,000,000
bytes) is a common marketing ploy used by hard drive manufacturers to
make their products seem a larger than they really are.


Bruce Chambers

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"Bare" > wrote in message
...
> Just installed a 80 gig Drive.. XP shows it as 74.53 Gb's..
> Why? and more importantly how can I get this # a bit
> bigger?

[Ken Blake]

"Bare" > wrote in message
...

> Just installed a 80 gig Drive.. XP shows it as 74.53 Gb's..
> Why?


Because it's not an 80GB drive. It's actually a 74.53GB drive.

All drive manufacturers, in what I consider a deceptive attempt
to make their drives appear larger than they are, define a GB as
1,000,000,000 bytes. Although one billion is the standard for the
meaning of "giga-," there's a long tradition in the computer
field to treat the "giga-" prefix as meaning 1024 x 1024 x 1024
bytes (1,073,741,824). So Windows is telling you that you have
74.52GB, while your drive manufacturer is telling you that you
have 80 billion bytes.

Do the arithmetic yourself. 74.53GB is (approximately) 80
billion.


> and more importantly how can I get this # a bit
> bigger?


You can't.

--
Ken Blake
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