optimizing the hdd to the fullest

ive installed a new hdd on my pc 200gigs but m only getting bout 180gigs if that. is there any way to use the full 200gigs.

thx in advance

 

That is the full 200GB. When you format a drive, you lose 7% of the drive's space. The drive does indeed have a 200GB data capacity, but the NTFS file system takes up 7%, or 14GB, leaving you with 186GB.
Ever wonder why in my computer your drive's maximum size was never a round number?

 

ok. i see. no i never wondered why. but why is that?

 

I've just told you.
Formatting a drive so you can use it removes 7% of its total storage capacity, so 20GB drives become 18.6GB, 40GB to 37.2, 60GB to 55.8, 80GB to 74.4, 120GB to 111.6, 160GB to 148.6, 200GB to 186GB, 250GB to 232GB, 300GB to 279GB, and so on.

 

k. thanks for the 411

 

I'm guessing that means help or assistance?

 

harddrives are sold in salesmans gigs, that is bytes, 200,000.000,000 bytes to a salesman is 200 gigs, alas when you format it and it's more than a few gigs, it tells you it's size in gigs
you have to devide the 2 billion bytes by 1024 to get the kilobytes then again by 1024 to get the megabytes and..... then again by 1024 to get the gigabytes and thats where the 200 drops to 180 ish it was never really 200 gigs that was only in the salesmans head lol

 

So it's 200 Gigabytes, and not Gibibytes?
A Gibibyte being a binary gigabyte (instead of 1000x1000x1000x1000 bytes, it's 1024x1024x1024x1024 bytes)
Let's work this out
1.024^4 = 1.09951.
200GB / 1.09951 = 181.9GB.
Are you sure? I always pick up 186GB from my drive.
As far as I'm aware, the drives are produced as 200GB in the true sense of the word, it's just the NTFS formatting process that changes it.
I know this because if you format a 160GB drive with NTFS you get 149GB total space. If you format it using FAT32 you only get 147GB. Same drive, different formatting, so I concluded it must be the file systems.

 

411 =(info). thank you for your help

 

ntfs uses a different file system than fat, with ntfs you can actually choose the size of your sectors (no-one ever does), with fat you get one size which depends on the size of the hard drive patition
you get more space if you have a lot of small partitions than if you have one big one daft but true

i hope I'm right i did the course passed the exams and thats how i learnt it
but not all 200 gig harddrives are the same size in practice depends on maker, just thats how they sell them. ntfs as a file system uses no actual space apart from what you actually see

 

Hmm, so where does the 2GB go between them?

 

my 200 gig maxtor gives me 189.92 with 13 megs unallocated lol so I've done better than you
Just put it on to see
that was with a quick format dunno if a long one is different try not to use long ones

fat uses bigger cluster sizes so you get less space in a sector and therefore less space on a drive
IE: on a small 5 gig drive the cluster size is 512bytes
on a 32 gig drive the cluster size is 4096bytes
so the bigger the drive the less efficient it gets
letts all go back to 5 gig drives perhaps not

 

It was quick formatted with 4K cluster size.

As for the varying size, tell me why every 250GB drive I've seen used (that's Maxtor, WD, Seagate and Samsung) has had 232GB total space, and why every 500GB (that includes all the same brands) has had 465GB. If they vary so much how come every NTFS drive I've had or seen has exactly 7% storage missing? They weren't all mine, so there wasn't a common configuration I was making.

 

research it a bit more
i'm right about the size difference lol

 

Care to provide some links? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm not entirely sure where to start looking.

 

I learnt through courses provided by cisco and comptia,
got the course books
but you need to be a course member to access the materials
or a member who has passed one or more courses to get the more advanced stuff

try the A+ 'testout' discs the closest you can get to the real thing without leaving home
probably go great with your current courses you could use it as a break
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm
http://www.techiwarehouse.com/cms/articles.php?cat=11 <- this is a good one

 

I see now that the cylinder, head and sector count on drives varies giving you that extra bit of breathing room. However, the 7% loss is what most people have experienced. You got lucky with your 5.5%, or chose a generous brand!
The only modern drives I can access without ripping them out of a PC are both WD Caviars, and both omit how many of those they have. A 13GB Seagate Medalist and 4.3GB Samsung probably won't be much cop!

 

lol Its not a loss it was never there laffff

 

well true, let's call it 'difference from marked' then.

 

that un allocated space on hdd is where windows put the MBR= master boot record