Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics (
More info?)
You are right, of course.. it is indeed deceptive marketing.. I will reword
my replies in future, although I was always led to believe that it is the
formatting of the drive, or should I say, the way that Windows formats, that
leads to the anomaly between what a person is told they have and the usable
space after formatting.. I have also believed that the format information
does indeed use up some space..
"Ken Blake" <kblake@this.is.an.invalid.domain> wrote in message
news:O8hQLVwqEHA.332@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> In news:eV%23eY$vqEHA.1992@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl,
> Mike Hall <mike.hall.mail@sympatico.ca> typed:
>
>> 40gb is the size of the drive in unformatted form.. formatting uses
>> up some of the space..
>
>
> No, this isn't correct. He has a 38GB drive, not a 40GB one.
>
>
> All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while the
> rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to the 30th
> power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 40 billion byte drive is actually around
> 38GB.
>
>
>
> Some people point out that the official international standard defines the
> "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct though they are,
> using the binary value of GB is so well established in the computer world
> that I consider using the decimal value of a billion to be deceptive
> marketing.
>
>
> --
> Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
> Please reply to the newsgroup
>
>
>
>
>
>> "Calvin C." <CChang@mjlm.com> wrote in message
>> news:eC0lJ3vqEHA.1992@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>>>i have a 40gb HD and try to format it before a clean xp isntall.
>>>however, there's only one 38gb partition when i run fdisk, and where
>>>is the rest of about 2 gb space. i assume it's the EISA partition
>>>from Novell set up by previous user ( i saw the wording
>>>Novell.....when system startup) or whatever kind of system
>>>partition...
>>> how can I reclaim those spaces?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> CC
>
>