Actual hard drive sizes....

howdy all.....

What's the deal with hard drive sizes ???

Yesterday, I set up 2 x SEAGATE 80gig SATA hard disks on RAID with my INTEL
865 PERLL board....
After setup, I`m noticing that I`m missing 11gig out of my supposedly 160gig
raid setup.....
Total space available on the freshly NTFS formatted drives was 149gig.....

Originally , I was running only one drive for a few weeks which was missing
about 6gig. of space....
I just bought this other one and set them up together on raid and now it`s
missing 11gig...

Seems to me I`m getting shafted on what I`m actually paying for....

I did use a Western Digital 80gig. drive a while ago on my previous machine
and that was no where near as bad as these.....

also , the Seagate`s are quite noisy compared to the western digital....
So much for improvements / upgrades..........

Thanks guys....
Brad.

brad wrote:
howdy all.....

What's the deal with hard drive sizes ???

Yesterday, I set up 2 x SEAGATE 80gig SATA hard disks on RAID with
my INTEL 865 PERLL board....
After setup, I`m noticing that I`m missing 11gig out of my supposedly
160gig raid setup.....
Total space available on the freshly NTFS formatted drives was
149gig.....

Originally , I was running only one drive for a few weeks which was
missing about 6gig. of space....

That would be correct.

I just bought this other one and set them up together on raid and now
it`s missing 11gig...

That's 11GB over *TWO* drives not one.

Seems to me I`m getting shafted on what I`m actually paying for....


Suggest you learn the difference between binary and decimal - you paid for
160 *decimal* GBs and you've got 160 *decimal* GBs. You're not 'missing'
anything.


I did use a Western Digital 80gig. drive a while ago on my previous
machine and that was no where near as bad as these.....

And you didn't notice that was 'missing' 6GB?

In what way - 'missing' space?! Well it's proportional - you 'lose' 11GB of
a 160GB, ergo you 'lose' 5.5GB on an 80GB.

also , the Seagate`s are quite noisy compared to the western
digital.... So much for improvements / upgrades..........

Thanks guys....
Brad.

"brad" Ran in the back door and shouted
:

howdy all.....

What's the deal with hard drive sizes ???

Yesterday, I set up 2 x SEAGATE 80gig SATA hard disks on RAID with my
INTEL 865 PERLL board....
After setup, I`m noticing that I`m missing 11gig out of my supposedly
160gig raid setup.....
Total space available on the freshly NTFS formatted drives was
149gig.....

Originally , I was running only one drive for a few weeks which was
missing about 6gig. of space....
I just bought this other one and set them up together on raid and now
it`s missing 11gig...

Seems to me I`m getting shafted on what I`m actually paying for....

I did use a Western Digital 80gig. drive a while ago on my previous
machine and that was no where near as bad as these.....

also , the Seagate`s are quite noisy compared to the western
digital.... So much for improvements / upgrades..........

Thanks guys....
Brad.



Hard-drive manufacturers usually determine the size of the drive based on
the old metric standard, where kilo = 1000. So the notations are powers
of ten (kilo, mega, giga). But some people seem to believe that kilo =
1024 (or 210) and that PC makers are using deceptive notations to promote
drive sizes. Not so. A kilobyte (KB) normally means 1000, but a kibibyte
(KiB) = 1024, according to the International Electrotechnical Commission
standard. Manufacturers are using the correct notation, as they are
calculating the hard-drive size (unformatted) using the old standard
(metric).

Cluster size also has an effect on the reported *formatted* size.
But that's another whole can 'O worms....

--
MrToad

"brad" wrote in message
...
What's the deal with hard drive sizes ???

snipped

Right-click a drive in My Computer and click Properties. In the centre you
will see the decimal values and on the right their binary equivalents.

"MrToad" nospam@nospam wrote in message
...
snip!

Cluster size also has an effect on the reported *formatted* size.
But that's another whole can 'O worms....

Can you expand/ help here? I have Win98 SE, and want to change my 2 x 20Gb
RAID 0 (striped) to RAID 1 (mirrored) using 2 x 80Gb.
Currently I have 2 partitions. After formatting with (the patched) FDISK or
PatitionMagic 6, will I lose to much space if only keep two partitions? Or
should do it into thirds?
--
Susan

When you FORMAT harddrives you lose space to the formatting. Losing 11 GB
out of 160 GB sounds about right.

--
DaveW



"brad" wrote in message
...
howdy all.....

What's the deal with hard drive sizes ???

Yesterday, I set up 2 x SEAGATE 80gig SATA hard disks on RAID with my
INTEL
865 PERLL board....
After setup, I`m noticing that I`m missing 11gig out of my supposedly
160gig
raid setup.....
Total space available on the freshly NTFS formatted drives was 149gig.....

Originally , I was running only one drive for a few weeks which was
missing
about 6gig. of space....
I just bought this other one and set them up together on raid and now it`s
missing 11gig...

Seems to me I`m getting shafted on what I`m actually paying for....

I did use a Western Digital 80gig. drive a while ago on my previous
machine
and that was no where near as bad as these.....

also , the Seagate`s are quite noisy compared to the western digital....
So much for improvements / upgrades..........

Thanks guys....
Brad.

"S.Boardman" Ran in the back door and
shouted :

"MrToad" nospam@nospam wrote in message
...
snip!

Cluster size also has an effect on the reported *formatted* size.
But that's another whole can 'O worms....

Can you expand/ help here? I have Win98 SE, and want to change my 2 x
20Gb RAID 0 (striped) to RAID 1 (mirrored) using 2 x 80Gb.
Currently I have 2 partitions. After formatting with (the patched)
FDISK or PatitionMagic 6, will I lose to much space if only keep two
partitions? Or should do it into thirds?
--
Susan



IIRC, Partition Magic will let you specify the cluster sizes(?), [correct
me if I wrong], there for, you can keep your two large partitions *if*
you keep your cluster sizes down to 4K, that way you'll lose the least
amount of drive space.

With FAT32, after 8GB, the cluster size increases to 8KB, 16GB is 16KB
and anything larger than 32GB the cluster size is 32KB!!!

IF PMagic 6 doesn't allow you to keep the 4KB cluster size for your
drives, I would suggest upgrading to Windows XP Pro if possible, the
cluster sizes stay at 4KB up tp 2TB, [tb=terabytes].


--
MrToad

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 05:10:09 -0000, MrToad nospam@nospam wrote:



IIRC, Partition Magic will let you specify the cluster sizes(?), [correct
me if I wrong], there for, you can keep your two large partitions *if*
you keep your cluster sizes down to 4K, that way you'll lose the least
amount of drive space.

With FAT32, after 8GB, the cluster size increases to 8KB, 16GB is 16KB
and anything larger than 32GB the cluster size is 32KB!!!

IF PMagic 6 doesn't allow you to keep the 4KB cluster size for your
drives, I would suggest upgrading to Windows XP Pro if possible, the
cluster sizes stay at 4KB up tp 2TB, [tb=terabytes].

The overhead from cluster size differences isn't all that significant
these days with drives having dozens of GB capacity.

I would advise the opposite, to use PM to INCREASE the cluster size to
32K, which slightly improves performance but also decreases
fragmentation, another performance increase.


Dave

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 15:20:56 -0000, MrToad nospam@nospam wrote:

Hard-drive manufacturers usually determine the size of the drive based on
the old metric standard, where kilo = 1000. So the notations are powers
of ten (kilo, mega, giga). But some people

Yes, the rest of computer industry, when talking about storage. How
many bytes are there, for instance, in 128 MB of RAM?

seem to believe that kilo =
1024 (or 210) and that PC makers are using deceptive notations to promote
drive sizes. Not so.

Not true. Rather, it probably started out as cheating. But since every
HD manufacturer is now using the metric Kilo, it's not unfair cheating
anymore, just an overall inflation compared to, say, RAM. Of course
manufacturing constraints are different between RAMs and HDs.

A kilobyte (KB) normally means 1000

No, it doesn't. Common usage has been, for several decades, that
KiloByte = 1024 bytes. Granted, it's not SI, but that doesn't mean
it's wrong and more than imperial units are wrong. The two kilos are
homonyms, one isn't more or less correct.

but a kibibyte
(KiB) = 1024, according to the International Electrotechnical Commission
standard. Manufacturers are using the correct notation, as they are
calculating the hard-drive size (unformatted) using the old standard
(metric).

All fine and dandy but it remains to be seen if that nomenclature will
be widely adopted. Does MS report file sizes in KB or KiB? Like it or
not, that's the deciding factor.

kony Ran in the back door and shouted
:

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 05:10:09 -0000, MrToad nospam@nospam wrote:



IIRC, Partition Magic will let you specify the cluster sizes(?),
[correct me if I wrong], there for, you can keep your two large
partitions *if* you keep your cluster sizes down to 4K, that way
you'll lose the least amount of drive space.

With FAT32, after 8GB, the cluster size increases to 8KB, 16GB is 16KB
and anything larger than 32GB the cluster size is 32KB!!!

IF PMagic 6 doesn't allow you to keep the 4KB cluster size for your
drives, I would suggest upgrading to Windows XP Pro if possible, the
cluster sizes stay at 4KB up tp 2TB, [tb=terabytes].

The overhead from cluster size differences isn't all that significant
these days with drives having dozens of GB capacity.

I would advise the opposite, to use PM to INCREASE the cluster size to
32K, which slightly improves performance but also decreases
fragmentation, another performance increase.


Dave

Actually it does make a big difference.
Lets take a 1KB shortcut for example, with FAT32 on a drive bigger than
32GB, it will consume 1KB of disk space with 31KB wasted.
Sure, you may have tons of disk space, but the OP wanted to know how to
minimize the loss. Keeping cluster sizes down is an economical way to do
just that.
Plus, with using the NT filing system, [NTFS], fragmentatioin doesn't
make as big as an impact as it does with the FAT-based filing structures.
Have a look at this:
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm


--
MrToad