XP Wasting Disk Space on new hard drive

Hi there can someone help me out here.
I've bought a new hard drive, a Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 200gb, I've formatted the whole drive as one partition using NTFS. But my disk manager shows a 189gb hard disk. What happened to the other 10.3gb? Is there a way I can reclaim this wasted disk space? I'm running Windows XP Pro. And using an Ultra ATA 100 Pci card controller as I ran out of IDE slots.
I've used the MAxblast 3 software which Maxtor recommends to use to set up the hard drive. It identifies the 200Gb partition easily but when I finish setting it up, WIndows always shows I only have 189gb available. I've used XP disk manager and Partition Magic 8 as well to format and create these partitions but always come up with the same results. Is there something I am doing fundamentally wrong here or is this to be expected. I mean 10gb is a lot of wasted disk space.
Any suggestions would be most grateful!

 

Hey man,
I have 2 120 gig hd's.I found out that the universal way everyone measures a gig is not a full or complete gig at all it is actually less than a gig and when you have 200 gig hd youre going to end up with something like 190 actuall gigs.I know it sounds wierd but its true i wasnt to happy when i found out either if its not a full gig then why did i have to pay for a full gig was my question.maybe to get a better answer you could ask people about how the hd companys measure a gig.Im not sure about any other factors like xp as far as wasting space but i know i looked into it when i bought my drives about a year ago now i cant remeber the exact numbers i wish i could so i can explain it better but i know im right.we the consumers are always getting ripped off man the harddrive situation reminds me of buying jewelry for example a diamond ring may not be exactly the size they say it is it can be smaller than what they advertise they are allowed to advertise it as a certain size as long as it falls into the allowable size range the law has set up so it can be bigger(yeah right) or smaller than what they advertise it as i learned that from a jewelry pro

 

Hi guys,

the correct way to calculate a drive's size in bytes is SIZE_IN_GB * 1024 * 1024, so your 200gb maxtor drive should have 209715200 Bytes available. Actually it has 200000000 bytes available (200GB * 1000 * 1000), which makes real 190.73gig. All manufacturers use this "formula" as it is supposed to be easier to understand.

So, as a matter of fact, you did nothing wrong...

 

its the same as DVDs, you see, computers measure space as 1,024 bytes to a killobyte, 1,024 killobytes to a megabyte, 1,024 megabytes to a gigabyte, but companies round it down to 1,000 because its easier to understand and sounds better, but when you install this in your computer you lose space, thats why a 40 GB hd is 38.5 or whatever when you stick it in your pc, also a dvd says it can hold 4.7GB, but in reality it can only hold 4.38GB

 

It all comes down to the simple math. Computers use base 2 for every thing and us humans like base 10. Just be thankful that its not in nibbles or bits, then that would really through you off. That still gets 56k modem people, that a bit is not a byte. But this is the one thing we can blame Apple for. The naming is really stupid. Also this doesn't seem official, but I have noticed if it GB its using base ten and if its Gb its using standard computer base two naming.

Note: 8bits equals 1byte
Also 4bits equals 1Nibble
1 kilobyte equals 1024 bytes
1 gigabyte equals 1024 Megabytes or 1073741824 bytes
1 exabyte equals 1024 Petabytes or 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 bytes (largest I know)

 

Yottabyte: 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes or 2^80 bytes.

 

Misrepresented hard drive capacity has been an issue for years. Earlier this year a class action lawsuit was filed in LA over it: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112558,00.asp

Hard drive manufacturers count a byte as 1000, not 1024, so that is where the discrepancy is. In the early 90s there was a similar action against monitor manufacturers that claimed misleading figures - 17" when really only 16" was viewable. Thats why they include the viewable area in monitor specs now.

 

Thank you guys for this. Please find below Maxtors' official response to my same question. I am glad that there is nothing which I did wrong. I just feel a bit cheated.
I agree with you Xian, there should be a law in place which states you have to display the actual amount of diskspace available. That way people will know exactly what they will get out of these products.
Thanks again

Dear Sir or Madam,

Further to your enquiry, the difference arises from two separate ways of calculating capacity. We, in common with all Hard drive manufacturers, commonly use the calculation:

1 Kilobyte = 1 x 10 to the power of 3 (ie 1,000) bytes
1 Megabyte = 1 x 10 to the power of 6 (ie 1,000,000) bytes
and so on.

Thus a 7 Gb drive has a capacity of:

7,003,584,000 bytes, or 7,004 Megabytes, or 7 Gigabytes.

However, DOS uses a different calculation, based on powers of two:

1 Kilobyte = 1 x 2 to the power of 10 (ie 1,024) bytes
1 Megabyte = 1 x 2 to the power of 20 (ie 1,048,576) bytes
and so on.

and thus comes up with a digital Megabyte capacity of 6,679 Mb or 6.68 Gb.

I hope this explains this rather convoluted calculating scheme that has developed, and that you haven't actually lost any capacity at all - it is just counted in a different manner.

Further information can be found at http://www.maxtor.com/technology/digi_vs_deci.html
If you need more help, please do not hesitate to contact me. In order to allow us to deal with all enquiries as efficiently and accurately as possible we would ask that you include any previous emails when replying to us.

Kind Regards,

Customer Support Team, Maxtor Ireland Ltd

 

YOU ARE ALL NUMB NUTS SHOPS AND MANUFACTURERS CALCULATE IT IN GIBBI BITES NOT GIGA BITES TRY TO THINK OF OLD MONEY THEN METRIC 1GIBBY=1000BITES SO ITS SLIGHTLY SMALLER

 

WTF? are you on drugs or something? you dont make a bit of sense! anyway, we already explained the reason- and your the numb nuts because its a know fact!

 

Whoa dude you dont have to SHOUT at us we can hear you just fine.


What is old money and when did our monetary system become metric.

 

whatever VHW is on I will have a double anyone else?~heh~ oohh aye n My ears hurt
askyew in the uk we decimilized in 1971 if you need translations on old to new money UK wise post again glad to help n NO I were not born then BOL

DaOsT

 

I thought the british used pounds that doesn't sound very metric. jk hehe

 

YOU ARE ALL MAD! HAPPY BUT MAD

 

I am not a Mother Against Drunk drivers or a Mother Addicted to Drugs. So I can't say that I am MAD. I might be deaf, but not MAD. What is a GIBBY, is it what you tell you girlfriend when she laughs. Hey baby really it big, its just in Gibby's.
Sorry that is hitting below the belt, but I couldn't resist.

 

I realize its the principle of the thing, not getting exactly what you think you're getting. Par for the course. When did a 17 inch screen ever actually measure 17 inches?

 

But a 17 inch is 17 inches (diagonally). To bragg, my 15inch notebook is actually 15.1inch diagonally. I won you need LCD, the old CRT`s really such and limit you. The older CRT did lie, your right. My 20inch 1974 Tv is only 18.5 inches diagonally. But the thing is older than me and still works great.

 

i know pounds doesn't sound very metric but it is of course. 100 pence to the pound and all that. I still don't know how old money used to work. something to do with old pence and shillings. weird.