topic Re: Drive size in PCs & Accessories

Drive size

co2laser — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:59:29 GMT

Hi, I have a C2S that I believe has a 120 gig hard drive but when I check it in “my computer” it shows only a 102 gig drive. Please enlighten me. Thanks co2laser

Re: Drive size

Blencogo — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:49:41 GMT

Hi co2laser.

Yes it is confusing - have a look at the paragraph "Consumer Confusion" here: -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

Basically, your drive has 120,000,000,000 bytes capacity.
Unfortunately, computers cannot count properly because Windows uses the binary system to count. The nearest it can get to a KB of 1,000 bytes is 1,024 (two to the power of 10).
So Windows measures a kilobyte as 1,024 bytes.
So windows measures a Gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes (two to the power of 30)
So Windows measures your 120,000,000,000 byte drive as 111.75GB
9GB is the hidden Recovery Partition.

Re: Drive size

co2laser — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:13:02 GMT

Thank you for your reply Blencogo a bit complicated but I feel better now. co2laser.