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320gb hd only reads 298gb

hi people

ive got a 320gb hd and it only reads 298gb how come im using windows xp sp2

robina_80

Because the 320GB is marketed in 1000MB=1GB, but the operating system reads it as 1024MB=1GB

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Jet

so it will only read up to 300 it wont read the full 320gb mark

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robina_80

The entire "320GB" thing is just a tool of marketing. They advertise it as that big but the computer reads it differently. You're HDD is fine, don't worry anymore about your "lost" 20GB.

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Yasu

This happens with all HDDs- my portable 40gb is actually 37.2, and my PC HDD is supposed to be 160- its like 145 or so. So unless you are really picky, dont worry about it.

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Burgerbob

so if its marketed at 320Gb, and the OS interprets it to have 298Gb, when you have 298Gb worth of stuff on it, is there still 22Gb free?

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Livzz

probably not

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Bootup05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Livzz

so if its marketed at 320Gb, and the OS interprets it to have 298Gb, when you have 298Gb worth of stuff on it, is there still 22Gb free?

No, because the 320GB figure is completely false. It's not the fact that there is that amount of space but the computer reduces it. It's the vendors of the hard drives that artificially inflate the figure to make it sound bigger than it really is. So in future, to work out what the capacity of a drive really is (in Gb), use this formula:

Real Figure = ( Advertised figure x 1,000,000,000 ) / 1024 / 1024 / 1024

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magicman

320 x 1,000 = 320,000
320,000 / 1,024 = 312.5GB

In reality you only have 312GB of storage. As for the rest, it's probably taken up by the file system and/or a few other things.

It happens with all hard drives.

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[-0MEGA-]

Quote:

Originally Posted by [-0MEGA-]

In reality you only have 312GB of storage. As for the rest, it's probably taken up by the file system and/or a few other things.

Unfortunately, you only did the multiply and divide once. You have to reduce the advertised figure to bytes before dividing back up to gigabytes, if you do that, the figure you come to is 298.02Gb, which is accurate.

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magicman

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