Hard Drive Sizes
 

Hi all

I've recently ordered a Western Digital 40 gig hard drive and I've just installed it.

I've found that it only has a capacity of 31.5 gigs.

I need help here - can anyone tell me whether this is normal or should I send it back.

ie for a standard Western Digital 40 gig drive to only have 31.5 gigs on it.

Is this normal - does it apply to Seagate Barracuda or Maxtor hard drives - do they tend to have alot less than what is advertised when you buy them.

Thanks in adavnce - Skyline

well, there is usually some overhead from the partitions and filesystems on the HD but losing 8.5 GB is way out of whack...

Really - it should be at least 36/37. That's more like a 35 gig drive.

Check the drive geometry in CMOS.

A kilobyte is 1024 bytes.
A megabyte is 1024 kilobytes.
A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes.

However the HD manufacturers create false advertising by using the following definitions:

A kilobyte is 1000 bytes.
A megabyte is 1000 kilobytes.
A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes.

Which means a 40 gig is 38.15 gigs. So he still got robbed. Knock off another gig or two for odds and ends and there's still no way you get 31.5.

I'd uninstall it and tell 'em to give you another one.

-- Put it the other way - a 31.5 gig drive by thousands is 33.03.

Cheers guys

Ive noticed the drive heads are clciking slightly also - this should only happed after 3 or 4 years - its a Caviar at 7200 with 2mb cache - its fast but it shouldnt be clicking yet - it'll have to go back

Hi

I came across this whith several disks, some have even an extra jumper
on it . That's meant for cap limiting. If your bios doesn't detect the right
geometry, you can 'fool' it by using this jumper. You 'll loose some gigabyte
though. Read the leaflet that came with the drive or the sticker thats on
the drive.
But if you want all, that you have paid for, then you might have to upgrade
your bios. Be carefull though, you can fry it as well.

good luck

You've either got a really old mobo BIOS or you've got the drive jumpered for 32 Gb clip. The other 1/2 gig of course missing due to the linear vs real 1000 != 1024 problem, plus more eaten away for inodes.

And... I just read the above post which says the same thing, hrmmm.

Cheers,

Finegan

Thanks for the suggestions.

Ive changed the jumper from Master to Cable Select and I've now got the right amount.

I was under the impression that Typically you jumpered it to master when installing it on the primary master IDE channel - slave when putting it on the primary slave channel and Cable Select when you've got an Old computer with a funny propriarty setup which needs you to leave it to the computer to assign what it wants via cable select.

Anyway - its sorted

Thanks.