dumb question, but just wondering

[Dirty B]

i just installed a new seagate 200gig cuda and after i did all the intial setup and partitioning i only have 186 gigs of space. I left it as one big partition cause I am going to use it as storage for all my mp3s and video. I know about the 137gig barrier but is there something I am missing or is everything ok?

 

[Stinger836]

Everything is ok. The reason it is 186GB instead of 200GB is because HDD mfr's measure a GB differently than windows.

 

[Tramontane]

so does that mean I am actually getting less storage than I thougt? if you dont mind how do they measure it differently? isnt that kinda like just boosting their numbers? thanks.

 

[Stinger836]

Yes it does kinda mean less storage than you thought if you didn't previously know how it was messured. I think it goes like this, in Windows a GB is 1024MB but HDD manufacturer's measure a GB as 1000MB, resulting in a lower than advertized total space showing up in Windows.

 

[Ice Czar]

in addition there is loss from filesystem overhead (cluster size)
generally it should be about a 10% loss when all said and done between those two.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/partFAT32-c.html
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/partCluster-c.html

 

[Tramontane]

ouch thats harsh I thought I was going to have all that room. Well i guess 186 will have to do Thanks for all the help guys

 

[AceGoober]

Just as an additional note, there are actually 2 different type of capacities that are referenced. The UNFORMATTED capacity is what you are actually getting - 200GB. The FORMATTED capacity will be 186GB because of OS overhead as Ice CZAR pointed out. It is a big bummer losing 14GB of space, but the OS needs it to be able to keep track of all files present as well as partition information.

Hope this helps!

AceGoober