Maxtor 80 GB really 80 GB???

[freestylin59]

I just bought the Maxtor Diamondmax 80 GB 5400 RPM hard drive. When I installed it, I was surprised that it was only 75GB. Do I have wrong setting or something? Pls help!!

[dmoltrup]

My 40Gig Maxtor drive has 37.2 after formatting. That is normal. The drive takes up a bit of space for "cataloging" where it's files are.

There are other things that take up additional space as well. For example, my clusters are 4K. This probably doesn't mean much, but essentially, if I have a 1K size file on my drive, it still takes up 4K. Each file takes up a size in 4K increments. It is quite possible to fill a drive with tiny little files, just by having way too many of them. While you only have 10Gig in little tiny files, a 40Gig drive could be full. Not likely, but possible.

A related technicality is floppy disks. Take a look at a blank floppy. The outer cover claims that it is 2MB. Now format it, and you get 1.44MB. This is because it has to track where its files are and sets aside space to do this.

[Ryan S]

Every hard drive I have seen in recent memory is reported from the manufacturers as 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 Bytes. Windows (and probably all other operating systems) report 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 (1 MB = 1,048,576 and 1 KB = 1024 Bytes. Hard drive manufacturers report their numbers to inflate hard drive's "apparent" size, while the "power of 2" values are usually used more generally.

80,000,000,000 bytes = 74.5058 GB

This difference in hard drive size is definitely not due to any "cataloguing."

[rlemieux]

Ryan is completey right, the standard kb is 1024. That is why your hard drive appears "smaller". Most people think of kilo and think of 1000, in most cases theyd be right. But here in tech land its 1024. Which acumulates the higher you go as Ryan explained. That is why the HD manufacures can advertise 80G and it only be the 75G. Its not just maxtor btw, my IBM and Westen Digital are the same. As are most that I know of.

[araaraara]

And you're not actually losing any space because each file is reported as being smaller too.

The size reported in the BIOS should be the size in decimal.

[Psycho Logical]

80,000,000,000 bytes decimal = 74,505,805,969 bytes binary. Your 74.5GB (binary) drive still has 80GB (decimal) bytes of storage space. The confusion comes from the fact that you can only store files in clusters, which are made up of multiples of 512-byte sectors.

Whether you express storage capacity in decimal or binary bytes, the same amount of space is available. It's just a different way of expressing the same thing. You do not "lose" any space by stating the size in different units.

For example, 1 meter = 39.37 inches. The length is exactly the same, regardless which units are used to express it.

[Ammok]

Why is it then, when you go for a job, and the say 10k they actually mean 10,000 decimal. Not 10240.

I think all manufacturers should be made to quote decimal or binary when stating their figures, just trying to con you as usual.