Re: Calculating a Kilobyte

  • From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:26:43 +0200

A file doesn't occupy a certain multiple of sectors, but a multiple of 
clusters. A cluster can have 4kb or more (and maybe less), depending on the 
options you use when you format your hard disk.

If you use a 32kb cluster as a base for formatting, the access to the hard disk 
might be a little faster, but more space will remain unoccupied, because if a 
file has only 1 kb, then 31 kb remains unoccupied, or if a file has 40 kb, it 
will occupy a cluster and 8kb from the next cluster, the rest of 24 kb will 
remain unused from the second cluster (or block, or whatever).

But this is not important when talking about the size of the hard disks. No 
matter how you calculate, I guess no hard disk has exactly 80 GB, or 160GB... 
these are just sizes advertised by the hard disk manufacturers, in other way 
said... are only lies.

It could be a mess if we could buy hard disk of 76 GB, 77 GB, 79 GB, 81 GB... 
the manufacturers could promote harder such products.

Octavian

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "E.J. Zufelt" <everett@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: Calculating a Kilobyte


> Also,
> 
> On a harddrive there is used space, free space and wasted space.  Since 
> information is stored on a disk in sectors there are times that a small 
> amount of information takes up a large amount of space.
> 
> For instance, a file that is 123 bytes in size may take up 4096 bytes 
> because two files cannot be stored in the same sector.
> 
> The rule is that a single file can be stored in many sectors, but two files 
> cannot be stored in any one sector.
> 
> HTH,
> Everett
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Sina Bahram" <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 5:17 PM
> Subject: RE: Calculating a Kilobyte
> 
> 
>> You're being caught by the fact that harddrive manufacturers measure a
>> megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes, and your 188 gigabytes is being given to you 
>> in
>> terms of a gigabyte being 1,024 megabytes which are 1,024 killabytes which
>> are 1,024 bytes.
>>
>> Take care,
>> Sina
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hayden's 
>> Harness
>> Attachment
>> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 5:01 PM
>> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Calculating a Kilobyte
>>
>> I have an external USB Hard Drive. That says ihave 188GB free. The 
>> kilobytes
>> are 202,016,489,472. Dividing this by 188GB, gives 1,074,555,795. Huh? I
>> thought 1MB was 1,024,576.
>>
>> Angus MacKinnon
>> Infoforce Services
>> http://www.infoforce-services.com
>>
>> "Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into
>> the light." - Helen Keller
>>
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