8.4 gig hard drive shows as 7.87 gig

[seti]

Why is this?....where is that mystery memory? It's a Wester Digital caviar with 2 pretty even partitions. Also my back up drive (seagate medalist)...it's a 6.4 gig and shows 6.06 gig.

I'm using norton system information for this....sisoft sandra 99 says the same

[seanmo]

I think it's a difference in units measurement, megabits and megabytes. The drive manufacturers use the one that appears higher so their drives look better.

[gak]

I don't know why they do it unless it's just to make people think they're getting more than the are but the advertised space is the space before formatting. Makes a hell of a lot of sense, doesn't it?

[CMonster]

This point has been well addressed on several occasions. Offered as a confusing explaination, some say that there is a slight discrepency in measurement of drive size based on the fact that a megabyte is actually 1024K bytes instead of the 1000K bytes, so that there is a loss depending on which number you divide the drive capacity by. Also offered is the explaination that it takes some of your drive space to map out i.e. format the drive, like the tabs of a filing cabinate.

[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 03-29-99).]

[seti]

thanks guys...That's kind of sneaky of the HD companies.