HDD loses 10 GBs after OS install....is this normal??

[Sockman]

I recently built a PC that included a 120GB Seagate ATA100. Now, I had to reinstall XP to restore some vid drivers that I had accidentally deleted, and noticed that the free space on the Hard Disc is at 108GB.

Now, I know that the OS takes up around 2 gigs or so, but 10+?

This have anything to do with the fact I had installed 98se (gasp!) beforehand(I bought the XP Home upgrade)?

Just a thought.

 

[Pain]

I'm not sure why you needed to reinstall the OS to reload video drivers, but without going into that, a few things could be happening. First, disk sizes are approximate. The actual size of a 120G disk might vary depending on the number of bad sectors found during the initial format. Also, depending on the amount of ram, the swap file may take up a large chunk.

You don't need to install 98 to use the upgrade disk to install the os. You simply might be asked to varify you own the old os, usually by just inserting the original 98 disk during the install of XP.

I would start over again, do a clean install of xp only, and use the 98 disk to verify ownership of 98, then go from there.

 

[danizaken]

You didn't have 120GB to begin with.

 

[danizaken]

You didn't have 120GB to begin with.
You had 111GB, and then 108GB+- after installing XP.

 

[bigbadwolf]

120GB in hard drive manufacturers terms is bigger than the actual amount u can actually use, (really it is less than wot they state.) The bigger drives have even bigger difference than 10GB , coz its relative to ur HDD capacity how much space u lose. For example my old little 60gb drive only has 55GB available, whereas a 500GB drive wud hav way much more than 5GB less than the stated ammount. so danizaken is right in sayin u had only 111GB to begin with even tho its sold to you at a stated 120GB

 

[Lord-Ilpolazzo]

I recently built a PC that included a 120GB Seagate ATA100. Now, I had to reinstall XP to restore some vid drivers that I had accidentally deleted, and noticed that the free space on the Hard Disc is at 108GB.

Now, I know that the OS takes up around 2 gigs or so, but 10+?

This have anything to do with the fact I had installed 98se (gasp!) beforehand(I bought the XP Home upgrade)?

Just a thought.

Maybe you installed the os on a seperate partition or something.. and ur last install is stil there. But much more likely is that the way they define a Gb on a hard drive spec is different from what often shows in windows.. I have a 300Gb drive and that showed up as having a total size of 279Gb.. when completely blank.

If you look at the number of bytes of capacity the drive has it should be closer to the right number (if you right clikk drive>properties.. in there) I only assume its cos of that whole way that they define a Gb and hard drive mtfrs use the way that looks best as in gives largest size if that makes any sense

 

[MarkG]

120GB in hard drive manufacturers terms is bigger than the actual amount u can actually use

Not really true: there's no hidden unusable space on the disk, it all comes down to definitions of 'gigabytes'.

At some point in the distant past some drive manufacturer found they could sell more disks by giving the capacity in millions of bytes rather than traditional megabytes (about 5% larger), to make their disks look larger. Sooner or later all of them had to do the same, and today's disks show capacity in billions of bytes whereas XP shows the capacity in traditional gigabytes. So you actually get something like 7.5% less in Windows gigabytes (1024*1024*1024 bytes) than is printed on the label.

So basically there's PC gigabytes and marketing gigabytes, and they're not the same thing.

 

[bigbadwolf]

120GB in hard drive manufacturers terms is bigger than the actual amount u can actually use

Not really true: there's no hidden unusable space on the disk, it all comes down to definitions of 'gigabytes'.

At some point in the distant past some drive manufacturer found they could sell more disks by giving the capacity in millions of bytes rather than traditional megabytes (about 5% larger), to make their disks look larger. Sooner or later all of them had to do the same, and today's disks show capacity in billions of bytes whereas XP shows the capacity in traditional gigabytes. So you actually get something like 7.5% less in Windows gigabytes (1024*1024*1024 bytes) than is printed on the label.


thats exactly what i was talking about - wot i sed is identical to wot u sed, i didnt say that theres any 'hidden space you can't use' just that the actual amount of space is less than the stated value , when u actually see it on the screen.

 

[Guest]

Just to qoute wusy in the thread he pointed out for ya. Nice and simple:

"80GB is the advertise unformatted raw capacity in 1000MB=1GB
74GB is the formatted capacity defined by 1024MB=1GB under Windows."

 

[xgas]

Maybe your sector size is more than 8k?

 

[p05esto]

Maybe the cookie monster broke in while you were sleeping and took a bite out of the HD platter after mistaking it for a cookie?

 

[bigbadwolf]

Maybe the cookie monster broke in while you were sleeping and took a bite out of the HD platter after mistaking it for a cookie?

lol cud hav been, its happened to alot of people - either that or the boggie man

 

[FITCamaro]

A real gigabyte of space to a computer is 1,073,741,824 bytes.

A gigabyte to a hard drive manufacturer is 1,000,000,000 bytes.

Hence the loss of space.

 

[p05esto]

It's deceptive marketing. On a large drive it's a shocker to see how much true drive sapce you have compared to what the box says. Kinda ticks ya off.

 

[Smiley]

Ditto... but you might find these useful Gigabyte.

'1 Capacity calculated as 1 Gbyte = 10^9 bytes' -- Barracuda 7200.7 spec (pdf)