Size of 250Gb Hard Drive only 232Gb

[Kev Sharratt]

Hi

I think I know the answer to this but want to check because I've heard that large drives sometimes don't show their full capacity.

I bought a WD 250Gb hard drive, when I connected it as a slave (going to clone my current C: drive) it only showed 232 Gb. 232 Gb x 1.024 x 1.024 = 245Gb is this difference due to binary / decimal conversion or do I have to do something to make the system see the full drive

THanks Kev

[naptownman]

Everything is working okay. A 60 gig drive shows about 57, so multiply by 4x and you're right at the 245 number you calculated. I bet of you look somewhere on the packaging you'll find a disclaimer in very small print saying a 250 gig drive won't really show/be 250 gig. What's a modder to do? :confused:

[Peter M]

Exactly. HD sizes are advertized in decimal GB, while many programs display binary GiB.

[Kev Sharratt]

Thanks for the info but I now have another problem....

I bought the drive second hand, after installation a ran WD extensive diag test and it came up with 'too many bad sectors to continue' about 80% thru

Running the full right zero's now and it has stopped 3x so far with 'write zero's error'

Will I be able to make this drive usable or is it a bin job?

thanks Kev

[Kev Sharratt]

when i tried to re run the tests i get cable error

am hoping that i have a loose cable!!!!

thanks kev

[Midknyte]

it's a bad drive. toss it.

btw, your math is wrong.
1024B=1KB
1024KB=1MB
1024MB=1GB

so it would be:
250,000,000,000/(1024x1024x1024)=232GB

[sm8000]

Rough rule of thumb: subtract 7% (multiply by .93)

[G]

Never buy a second-hand HDD as you do not know its history.

They are cheap enough to buy new nowadays.

[Kev Sharratt]

The Drive has a manufacture date of March 05 so I am hoping the warranty is still valid

Kev

[Kev Sharratt]

I have check the WD site and the drive is under warranty so I have an RMA number.

Afterwards I had the case open as I was trying to sort my sound card and I checked the connection and it did move a bit at one end when I pushed it. I have re-started WD's full write zero's and whereas last time it was estimated to take 5 hours approx now its extimated at 20 hours and when I got up this morning the time seemed to be on track

I will see what results I get before sending back the drive

Thanks

Kev

[bruceb]

Since you already have an RMA number, use it & get a brand new drive
As you found when you moved the cable, the trouble cleared, so it could
either be a bad cable, bad cable connectors on the cable or possibly a
problem with the connector or soldering of the connector on the hard drive or
also, maybe a very fine break in a circuit board trace on the hard drive.

[Kev Sharratt]

I re-ran the writing zero's it took 21 hours and failed within 1 hour of completing so you are right I will send it back to WD. I'm very lucky that it was still in warranty

thanks Kev