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External hard drive question.

Guest Ferret1959

By Guest Ferret1959
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Guest Ferret1959

Guest Ferret1959

Posted
Posted

I've just been and bought a 320gig drive from PCWorld..

 

Now I've wired it up to my spare laptop it show to having only 298gig.

 

Anyone know if this is correct or have I been robbed of a fair chunk of memory?

 

Ta.

 

 

Happy New Year. :clap2:

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chesters1 Member

chesters1

Posted
Posted (edited)
I've just been and bought a 320gig drive from PCWorld..

 

Now I've wired it up to my spare laptop it show to having only 298gig.

 

Anyone know if this is correct or have I been robbed of a fair chunk of memory?

 

Ta.

Happy New Year. :clap2:

formatting takes a large chunk ,ntfs takes less than fat32 though

the size is always quoted unformatted it looks better

 

you can also check in.....control panel ........administrative tools......computer management......disk management ,this lets you allocate any un-allocated space and play with the partition sizes etc.please note fiddling with partitions containing data could bugger things up ,no problem with a new disk but heed all warnings!!! ,if you want to be safe just use any space found as a new partition and allocate a drive letter to it!!

XP has better disk management ,in the old days making partitions used to move your CD drive up the drive letter "path" now you can "fix" any drive letter and it "sticks" if you dont want software that runs from the CD not finding it because the CD drive letter has moved then simply allocate your new partitions drive letters after the CD drives drive letter!! !.E old partitions are say C D E for a 3 partition hard disk ,then you have your CD as F ,simply make your new drive's partitions as (for instance ) G ,you software will still find the CD exactly where it was and you will have your new drive later!

 

that pcworld is a joke ,look at the technical specs ! nothing about the interface (usb,usb2, firewire etc) no mention of if it needs a seperate psu ,small buffer though my cheapie samsung 160mb has 8 meg!!

 

make sure you have the microsoft large disk download installed ,there was a problem with windows shutting down before everything was stored from large disks buffers in the past ,hopefully it became part of the service packs but used to be a individual download.

 

a really cool tip is if your using your external disk between a win98 machine and a XP one ,MAKE SURE that one partition is formatted in FAT32 !!!

WHY?

because XP can "see" FAT32 and NTFS but 98 cannot see NTFS .

this partition can be used to hold stuff which both machines can see ,using a NTFS disk with 98 will only result in "do you want to format this disk" as it doesent realise it is already but in a way it cannot see .

there maybe a 3rd party bit of software for 98 to let it see NTFS but with 320 gig a 50gig partition in FAT32 for transporting stuff back and forth is cheaper

Edited by chesters1

Believe NOTHING anyones says or writes unless you witness it yourself and even then your eyes can deceive you

None of this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" crap it just means i have at least two enemies!

 

There is only one opinion i listen to ,its mine and its ALWAYS right even when its wrong

 

Its far easier to curse the darkness than light one candle

 

Mathew 4:19

Grangers law : anything i say will  turn out the opposite or not happen at all!

Life insurance? you wont enjoy a penny!

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." Thomas Jefferson

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chesters1 Member

chesters1

Posted
Posted
Nice one Chesters !!! :thumbs::thumbs:

 

Just found myself another 9 Gig !!! :clap2::clap2:

happy to help ,but sshhhh dont tell anyone you'l ruin my image!!

Believe NOTHING anyones says or writes unless you witness it yourself and even then your eyes can deceive you

None of this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" crap it just means i have at least two enemies!

 

There is only one opinion i listen to ,its mine and its ALWAYS right even when its wrong

 

Its far easier to curse the darkness than light one candle

 

Mathew 4:19

Grangers law : anything i say will  turn out the opposite or not happen at all!

Life insurance? you wont enjoy a penny!

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." Thomas Jefferson

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poledark Member

poledark

Posted
Posted

Notwithstanding Chesters brilliant reply, every manufacturer (PC World don't make them) will quote a higher figure for the storage capacity of a HD than you actually get. Don't seem to matter nowadays with 300+ available.

 

Even back in the dark ages they always quoted a higher figure.

 

There was a time when I knew the reason, but I have forgotten it :)

 

Den

"When through the woods and forest glades I wanderAnd hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,And hear the brook, and feel the breeze;and see the waves crash on the shore,Then sings my soul..................

for all you Spodders. https://youtu.be/XYxsY-FbSic

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zenith10 Member

zenith10

Posted
Posted (edited)

they told us why this happened at college but cant remember think it was there is 8 bits in a byte but they quote it as if there is 9 bits in a byte thats why you think youve got more storage than you have until you put it in

 

anyway found this on wikipedia

"Operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, frequently report capacity using the binary interpretation of the prefixes, which results in a discrepancy between the disk manufacturer's stated capacity and what the system reports. The difference becomes much more noticeable in the multi-gigabyte range. For example, Microsoft's Windows 2000 reports disk capacity both in decimal to 12 or more significant digits and with binary prefixes to 3 significant digits. Thus a disk specified by a disk manufacturer as a 30 GB disk might have its capacity reported by Windows 2000 both as "30,065,098,568 bytes" and "28.0 GB." The disk manufacturer used the SI definition of "giga," 109. However utilities provided by Windows define a gigabyte as 230, or 1,073,741,824, bytes, so the reported capacity of the disk will be closer to 28.0 GB. For this reason, many utilities that report capacity have begun to use the aforementioned IEC standard binary prefixes (e.g. KiB, MiB, GiB) since their definitions are unambiguous."

Edited by zenith10
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Guest Ferret1959

Guest Ferret1959

Posted
Posted

Well thanks for the replies folks, you certainly know more than PCW Tech support who hadn't got a flippin clue but then again not suprising.

 

 

Dave, it might only have a low cache but it's only for backup storage so not so much a working drive, I can put up with it.:)

 

Thanks again folks.

 

Happy New Year.

 

Dave.

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