i just installed a 200GB drive and it only shows up as 186.
I know there are formatty things going on (yes, that’s the technical term) and not everything can be used…but 14 gigs?
what’s up with this?
The difference between binary and decimal gigabytes is 7%, which is 14 gigabytes on a 200 gig drive. Understand, you will some “cluster waste” even beyond that; on average, each file wastes one-half of one cluster of space. A typical computer has a few hundred thousand files on it, and the cluster size typically ranges from 4K to 16K, so that’s another few more gigabytes that are missing (hey, a gigabyte here, a gigabyte there, and pretty soon you are talking about a significant amount of space), but this is within your 186 gigabytes, and is yet another type of loss.
NTFS can be more efficient for some types of files, but it depends on the mix of large files vs. small files. You’ve got a 200 gigabyte hard drive, and crazy as this may sound, you can’t get too upset about a few gigabytes of wasted space.
I stole a chart to make some sense out of this.
The difference between binary and decimal gigabytes is 7%, which is 14 gigabytes on a 200 gig drive. Understand, you will some “cluster waste” even beyond that; on average, each file wastes one-half of one cluster of space. A typical computer has a few hundred thousand files on it, and the cluster size typically ranges from 4K to 16K, so that’s another few more gigabytes that are missing (hey, a gigabyte here, a gigabyte there, and pretty soon you are talking about a significant amount of space), but this is within your 186 gigabytes, and is yet another type of loss.
NTFS can be more efficient for some types of files, but it depends on the mix of large files vs. small files. You’ve got a 200 gigabyte hard drive, and crazy as this may sound, you can’t get too upset about a few gigabytes of wasted space.
By the way, FAT32 file systems can cause some real problems and inefficiencies in processing (not disk useage, but performance) when they get above about 16 gigs, and especially 32 gigs PER PARTITION. If you have divided your 200 gig drive into FAT32 partitions larger than 32 gigs, you may run into some operations that take a VERY long time. NTFS is definitely to be greatly preferred for large partitions.
The hard drive manufactures use 1000 MB = 1 GB and 1000 KB = 1 MB, however most software uses 1024 MB = 1 GB and 1024 KB = 1 MB. After formatting, you’ll have even less than the 186.
Hey thanks for the info.
I’m not upset, I was just curious. This thing won’t be full for another month at least!
Man you just made me look like John Childs…
this is after formatting
Yeah, he should have something like 186.1GB, right?
200 GB * (1000^3 GiB) / (1024^3 GB) = 186.26 GiB
The software may show the total amount of space, but when formatting it, you’re going to have a table that indexes where the files are, this takes up space. There is also a cluster size that the hard drive is broken down into. So with each file that is on the system, you are losing about a half of the cluster size each time.
oh well, maybe this will do until 1TB drives are common. Or should I say 800GB drives
GB*i/GiB^ly= Gilby?
The base fact here is that the advertised size of hard drives is really BS. But apparently it’s legal to sell them that way, so they will continue to do so.
With CRT monitors it’s usually worse though. They usually advertise the size of the picture tube, which is not what you see. Then some ads will also give you the “viewable area” which is the absolute maximum of what can have a picture on it. But of course this is measured diagonally, to give the highest number possible. These diagonal numbers can be a little misleading these days (mostly with LCD monitors) as some are widescreen and some aren’t. Why not give the width? What a concept?
But no, it’s 10 hot dogs in a pack, and 8 buns.
Mmmmmmm… hot dogs.
Up in Canada it’s 12 and 8.
So i buy 2 packs of hotdogs and 3 packs of buns, it’s alot of hotdogs, but there is equal amount!
I refuse to eat hotdogs on bread. I still shiver when remembering my mom telling me it’s the same.
You shouldn’t mess with hotdogs, it’s not natural
Good call on the monitor size…how about that new 3.7" tire out there?
they measure the monitors the same way they’ve been measuring televisions for decades. and i believe the diag measure came about as a standard for comparison to avoid confusions from slightly different length ot width ratios in tv manufacturers.
I’m flattered. 
I’m sick of WD IDE disks breaking withing a week after purchase. So last week I bought again a Maxtor 200 Gb.
When installing FreeBSD on it the installer complained about wrong drive geometry, and hinted I should use whatever the BIOS sais. And so I changed it to
cylinders 65535
head 16
pre 0
landing 65534
sectors 255
and then it worked flawless, and apeared as 200Gb.
Changes are big your BIOS is different than mine.
But just to show you a real example of maybe the same problem.
Why doesn’t anyone ever care how many slices of bacon are in a package? Does anyone even know how many slices of bacon are in a package?
Good thing I have 3 packages in the fridge…
In a 16oz, 1lb, 454g package of bacon, you can get 10-15 slices depending on thickness. Yes, I did actually look at a bacon package in my fridge, and yes, I am going to cook up 5 slices right now.
My Condolences
Dear Brian,
I am sorry to hear about your loss. I know how much
you will miss those gigabytes. I hope that you are
doing well during this difficult time. If you ever need
someone to talk to, please do not hesitate to call me.
Take care of yourself.
Your friend,
Dave
(adapted from here – scroll down)