320GB HD is now 32GB!

On Mon, 22 May 2017 00:47:56 -0400, Alek
wrote:

philo wrote on 5/21/2017 7:27 PM:
O "delete volume"?


Yes

Thank you!


Sure, hope all is ok now


Yes, thanks. Funny thing: when I made a new volume, it was only 300GB,
rather than 320.



It's not really a funny thing. It's standard. Here's why:

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to
the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 320 billion byte drive is
actually around 300GB.

Some people point out that the official international standard
defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct
though they are, using the binary value of GB is so well established
in the computer world that I consider using the decimal value of a
billion to be deceptive marketing on the part of the manufacturer.

Ken Blake wrote on 5/22/2017 1:53 PM:
On Mon, 22 May 2017 00:47:56 -0400, Alek
wrote:

philo wrote on 5/21/2017 7:27 PM:
O "delete volume"?


Yes

Thank you!


Sure, hope all is ok now


Yes, thanks. Funny thing: when I made a new volume, it was only 300GB,
rather than 320.



It's not really a funny thing. It's standard. Here's why:

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to
the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 320 billion byte drive is
actually around 300GB.

Some people point out that the official international standard
defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct
though they are, using the binary value of GB is so well established
in the computer world that I consider using the decimal value of a
billion to be deceptive marketing on the part of the manufacturer.


Except that it used to show up as 320.

Alek wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote on 5/22/2017 7:05 AM:
Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.


Does your friend have a 32GB C partition on the internal drive? And did
he "clone" it rather than "image" it?

No idea. Neither. He ran Win10's recovery thing.

Tell him to use the latter next time. Cloning does to a drive exactly
what appears to have happened.

Are you suggesting that cloning would be better than using Recovery?


"The latter" above refers to "image".

I never clone; always image to an external drive. Some people like
cloning because it gives you a replaceable drive with which you can just
replace the failed HD. But NB. what it's done to your friend's drive.

An explanation and understanding of what has caused his shrinkage will
help avoid its recurrence.

Ed

Ed Cryer wrote:
Alek wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote on 5/22/2017 7:05 AM:
Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he
had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change
anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.


Does your friend have a 32GB C partition on the internal drive? And did
he "clone" it rather than "image" it?

No idea. Neither. He ran Win10's recovery thing.

Tell him to use the latter next time. Cloning does to a drive exactly
what appears to have happened.

Are you suggesting that cloning would be better than using Recovery?


"The latter" above refers to "image".

I never clone; always image to an external drive. Some people like
cloning because it gives you a replaceable drive with which you can just
replace the failed HD. But NB. what it's done to your friend's drive.

An explanation and understanding of what has caused his shrinkage will
help avoid its recurrence.

Ed

For some users, cloning is perfect for them.

A guy in one of the other groups, had just bought a new hard drive.
Rather than have him immediately put just backups on it, I had him
clone over the C: from the existing drive. (Then add a partition for
the backups which used about 90% of the drive.)

I don't know how many times he's had a computing disaster, he
just slides that drive into the machine, and uses that to dial out
for help.

So at least for that guy, he's "hooked on clones", and likes
to have a C: on the freshly purchased drives, even if the drive is
really only for backups.

And I'm for any solution you can find, that your user can handle,
and get himself out of trouble :-)

Personally, I always get myself out of trouble with backup
and restore. And making sure at least some of the
drives are quietly sitting on the shelf, where Locky
cannot get them :-) No scheme is really perfect for everything,
but a few belts and a few suspenders helps hold those pants up.

Paul

Paul wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:
Alek wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote on 5/22/2017 7:05 AM:
Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD
he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change
anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.


Does your friend have a 32GB C partition on the internal drive? And did
he "clone" it rather than "image" it?

No idea. Neither. He ran Win10's recovery thing.

Tell him to use the latter next time. Cloning does to a drive exactly
what appears to have happened.

Are you suggesting that cloning would be better than using Recovery?


"The latter" above refers to "image".

I never clone; always image to an external drive. Some people like
cloning because it gives you a replaceable drive with which you can
just replace the failed HD. But NB. what it's done to your friend's
drive.

An explanation and understanding of what has caused his shrinkage will
help avoid its recurrence.

Ed

For some users, cloning is perfect for them.

A guy in one of the other groups, had just bought a new hard drive.
Rather than have him immediately put just backups on it, I had him
clone over the C: from the existing drive. (Then add a partition for
the backups which used about 90% of the drive.)

I don't know how many times he's had a computing disaster, he
just slides that drive into the machine, and uses that to dial out
for help.

So at least for that guy, he's "hooked on clones", and likes
to have a C: on the freshly purchased drives, even if the drive is
really only for backups.

And I'm for any solution you can find, that your user can handle,
and get himself out of trouble :-)

Personally, I always get myself out of trouble with backup
and restore. And making sure at least some of the
drives are quietly sitting on the shelf, where Locky
cannot get them :-) No scheme is really perfect for everything,
but a few belts and a few suspenders helps hold those pants up.

Paul



Take worst case scenario; HD completely scrambled or blown apart.
I'd have to open case, replace HD, restore from Macrium image.
Your friend won't have to do the last item (saving, what? 45 minutes).

But, I can't recall when I last had a total system disc fail, so I just
have to do the last item; 45 minutes while I use an iPad or wash my hair.
And I keep four or so generations of my monthly image; all on the same
external HD.

Ed

On Sun, 21 May 2017 15:19:50 -0400, Alek
wrote:

A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

A partitioning program such as that built into Windows 10 or Windows
server will show you what has happened and enable it to be corrected.
Or a link may have been installed to allow it to be used in a system
which is limited to 32 GB.



Thanks.

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On Mon, 22 May 2017 14:12:04 -0400, Alek
wrote:

Ken Blake wrote on 5/22/2017 1:53 PM:
On Mon, 22 May 2017 00:47:56 -0400, Alek
wrote:

philo wrote on 5/21/2017 7:27 PM:
O "delete volume"?


Yes

Thank you!


Sure, hope all is ok now


Yes, thanks. Funny thing: when I made a new volume, it was only 300GB,
rather than 320.



It's not really a funny thing. It's standard. Here's why:

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to
the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 320 billion byte drive is
actually around 300GB.

Some people point out that the official international standard
defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct
though they are, using the binary value of GB is so well established
in the computer world that I consider using the decimal value of a
billion to be deceptive marketing on the part of the manufacturer.


Except that it used to show up as 320.


Where did you see that number?

Ken Blake wrote on 5/23/2017 11:34 AM:
On Mon, 22 May 2017 14:12:04 -0400, Alek
wrote:

Ken Blake wrote on 5/22/2017 1:53 PM:
On Mon, 22 May 2017 00:47:56 -0400, Alek
wrote:

philo wrote on 5/21/2017 7:27 PM:
O "delete volume"?


Yes

Thank you!


Sure, hope all is ok now


Yes, thanks. Funny thing: when I made a new volume, it was only 300GB,
rather than 320.



It's not really a funny thing. It's standard. Here's why:

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to
the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 320 billion byte drive is
actually around 300GB.

Some people point out that the official international standard
defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct
though they are, using the binary value of GB is so well established
in the computer world that I consider using the decimal value of a
billion to be deceptive marketing on the part of the manufacturer.


Except that it used to show up as 320.


Where did you see that number?


I guess he was looking at File Explorer.

On Tue, 23 May 2017 23:56:36 +0000, Jim H
wrote:

On Mon, 22 May 2017 10:53:44 -0700, in
, Ken Blake
wrote:

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to
the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 320 billion byte drive is
actually around 300GB.


No. GB is an abbreviation that means 10^9 bytes. It's a part of the
metric system of enumeration that's based on counting by powers of 10.


Yes, that's what I said in the paragraph quoted below.


If you want to refer unequivocally to 2^30 bytes, then that's
abbreviated GiB.


Some people point out that the official international standard
defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct
though they are,


that final comma would have been better as a period... unless you're
advocating for allowing people ignorant of established definitions to
dictate that the world change in order to eliminate their ignorance.


using the binary value of GB is so well established in the
computer world that I consider using the decimal value
of a billion to be deceptive marketing on the part of the
manufacturer.


What is also "so well established" in the computer world is that when
referring to hard drives, GB is 10^9. It's only when referring to RAM
that GB is assumed, by convention, to be 2^30.


It is also assumed by Windows when referring to drives.