[pchelpers] Re: size differential

Hi Billy,

Monday, October 15, 2007, 5:04:19 AM, you wrote:

>> Hello all My daughter wants an explanation as to why she bought a
>> Iomega 320gig external HDD and it only shows up as 298gig. I know
>> that this is usual, but a forget the explanation.

BE> Here?s a formula to convert ?retail size? to ?actual size.? This
BE> assumes that the manufacturer is using 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes
BE> (instead of 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes as they should).

BE> Actual Drive Size = Retail Drive Size * 0.931

Yes, one manufacturer started doing this years ago to make people
think they had bigger drives, and the others were pretty much forced
to follow suit; you'd have "X is offering bigger drives for the same
price!", even when the sizes were actually the same.

You really do lose a small amount of space when you partition (the
entire first track of the drive is reserved, although that's a drop in
the bucket), and a noticeable chunk of space when you format (root
directory, allocation table, NTFS special hidden control files, etc.).
Some space also gets reserved for future use.

You also need to remember to keep at least 15% free in order for
certain utilities and functions to work properly.  For example, System
Restore and Defrag both need at least 15% free to work properly.

-- 
Scott.



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