topic Re: Hard Drive Size in PCs & Accessories

Hard Drive Size

jinda — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:35:52 GMT

Having purchased my VGN S3HP, whilst the stated specification is 60gb when I check the hard drive sizes split between C - (Free 19.1gb total 27.9gb) D (Free 20.9gb total 20.9)

I have not added any new applications onto my machine and have only 3 music cds stored on the hard drive. But have only 40gig of hard drive capacity left.

Does this have anything to do with Sonys recovery system as I have noted that the display model also had around 20gig less than the stated spec of 60gig.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

in addition can someone please tell me how to personalise the s1 and s2 buttons.

Thks

Re: Hard Drive Size

kee-lo_ — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:54:44 GMT

Yes, it's the recovery system thats using all this space.

Re: Hard Drive Size

rich912 — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:06:40 GMT

To change the S button function click Start > All Programs > Vaio Control Centre and select the control item.
Your on-line manual gives details.
Link

Re: Hard Drive Size

jinda — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:24:00 GMT

does this mean that i can only save 40gig worth of information on my hard drive or is there a way to actually utilise the full 60gig.

it seems very misleading from sony to state that the machine has a 60gig hard drive when in the fact the actual "real" size is 40gig

Re: Hard Drive Size

seb21__ — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:41:47 GMT

Little correction. A lot people don't know that a harddisk with 60 GB has NOT 60 GigaByte.

That are GigaBit and NOT GigaByte.

Approx 57GigaByte are possible with your drive (without a file system). Only approx 55,8Gigabyte with NTFS5.

Re: Hard Drive Size

kee-lo_ — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:54:53 GMT

You can, but I really suggest keeping it for a good month or so, and make AT LEAST 2 copies of the recovery partition or Sony will want 70 Euros if they go wrong.

Re: Hard Drive Size

seb21__ — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:58:30 GMT

Kee-Lo has right.

Delete this hidden partition first, if you need the complete HDD size.

Re: Hard Drive Size

rich912 — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 21:37:47 GMT

To delete the hidden partition you need to carry out a system restore using the disks that you should have burned by now. Use the advanced recovery option and choose to remove the recovery partition.
Having said that, until you are running out of disk space there is little point as this recovery partition is your life line if all goes belly up and your recovery disks fail.

Re: Hard Drive Size

kee-lo_ — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 14:58:29 GMT

Erm, Seb, make the disks then delete is the best policy

Re: Hard Drive Size

hldomster — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 15:34:42 GMT

Little correction. A lot people don't know that a harddisk with 60 GB has NOT 60 GigaByte.

That are GigaBit and NOT GigaByte.

Approx 57GigaByte are possible with your drive (without a file system). Only approx 55,8Gigabyte with NTFS5.

I find this hard to believe as 1 gigabit is only 0.125 gigabytes, meaning that if Sony advertised a 60 gigabit hard drive it would only be 7.5 gigabytes.

Re: Hard Drive Size

TygerTyger — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 15:40:21 GMT

I think he meant the number of Megabytes to a Gigabyte. It doesn't really matter anyway, it's the recovery partition that's taking up the space, the counting of bytes doesn't make such a big difference.

Re: Hard Drive Size

kee-lo_ — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 15:45:25 GMT

True but people need to realise it's not 60GB when formatted with Windows.

Re: Hard Drive Size

seb21__ — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 15:48:46 GMT

Erm, Seb, make the disks then delete is the best policy

I find this hard to believe as 1 gigabit is only 0.125 gigabytes, meaning that if Sony advertised a 60 gigabit hard drive it would only be 7.5 gigabytes.

8Bit = 1Byte (or for example 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 or anything)

1GigaBit = 1.000MegaBit = 1.000.000KiloBit = 1.000.000.000Bit
1GigaByte = 1.024MegaByte = 1.048.576KiloByte = 1.073.741.824Byte

That's the theory.

Re: Hard Drive Size

vaiodon — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 22:59:05 GMT

8 bits = 1 byte: correct

The rest of the explanation misleading.

Disk capacity is never discussed in terms of bits, it's just bytes. The difference I think Seb21 is alluding to is the fact that drive vendors specify capacity in bytes in a base10 number system (1x10^6 - 1,000,000 - million/megabytes), whereas Windows (and any other OS) will create the file system in a base2 numbering system (1x2^20 - 1,048,576 - megabytes).

Confusingly, the former is sometimes referred to as Kb, the latter always KB. I guess this is where the bits mixup can occur - if we're talking about, for example, network speeds the 'b' in Kb or Mb means bits. Definitely not bytes.

Re: Hard Drive Size

seb21__ — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 07:34:03 GMT

The difference I think Seb21 is alluding to is the fact that drive vendors specify capacity in bytes in a base10 number system (1x10^6 - 1,000,000 - million/megabytes), whereas Windows (and any other OS) will create the file system in a base2 numbering system (1x2^20 - 1,048,576 - megabytes).

AHA:smileyidea: But then is the questiont: Why they do that? But it must be true because one sector on a Harddisk has 512 "Bytes"

On the HDD in my laptop are 116.280 cylinders with 63 sectors per track, and 16 heads. (normally a HDD has double so much heads, like disks)
That makes 117.210.240 LBA sectors. Or 60.011.642.880 Bytes - 60 million/megabytes. (60x10^6)

But 60x2^20 = 62.914.560 MegaByte. Which are 60GigaByte. But the HDD in my laptop has only 55,9 GigaByte. Because 60.011.642.880 Bytes / 1024 are 55,9 GigaBytes. Then 60x2^20 would be incorrect.

You understand my confusion?

Confusingly, the former is sometimes referred to as Kb, the latter always KB. I guess this is where the bits mixup can occur - if we're talking about, for example, network speeds the 'b' in Kb or Mb means bits. Definitely not bytes.

I know, that's true. It would be nice to have a 1MegaByte connection. The surprise is big if you see that the download rate is much smaller.

Re: Hard Drive Size

hldomster — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 09:42:13 GMT

This is my source of information. I love google, so brilliantly brilliant in every way.

Re: Hard Drive Size

seb21__ — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 09:59:50 GMT

:smileygrin: you could also use the Windows Calculator.

Re: Hard Drive Size

kee-lo_ — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 14:56:16 GMT

Trust Microsoft to go against the grain!

Re: Hard Drive Size

seb21__ — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:26:38 GMT

Re: Hard Drive Size

kee-lo_ — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 17:39:23 GMT

Using different base Seb