Maxtor 750gig only has 698gig on install

**Thunderchild** · February 2nd, 2008, 12:58 PM

Is this normal?

The drive capacity in the Maxtor manager reads as 750.2 the free space is 698..3gig and there are 200mb of files on it.

Thanks.

**Thunderchild** · February 2nd, 2008, 01:02 PM

**pullmyfoot** · February 2nd, 2008, 01:15 PM

yes it is normal. 1 gb actually equaling to 1024mb. however manufatures market 1gb as equal to 1000mb. hence you dont actually get 750gb, but more of 750000mbs. since in real life 1gb is equal to 1024mb, your 750000mb is not equal to 750gb. im not too sure if my explination is 100% correct but its something along those lines

**Bizkitkid2001** · February 2nd, 2008, 01:30 PM

Originally Posted by Thunderchild

Is this normal?

The drive capacity in the Maxtor manager reads as 750.2 the free space is 698..3gig and there are 200mb of files on it.

Thanks.

Drive manufactorers market 1gb as 1000mb. Windows says 1gb is 1024mb. So windows is going to show the drive as a smaller size than Maxtor is.

Then you have to take into consideration the space required to format the drive, and any extra software that was preloaded on the drive when you got it. (My WD MyBook 500gb came with about 5gigs worth of crap already on it.

**pullmyfoot** · February 2nd, 2008, 02:07 PM

ok so i was absolutely right then. yay

**Thunderchild** · February 2nd, 2008, 02:24 PM

Damn liars aren't they

A gig is 1024mb in my mind as that's the numeration you get when you build up from the base of bits to bytes, to kb, to mb etc

Ok long is it's not fubar I can live with it.

Cheers lads.

**Thunderchild** · February 2nd, 2008, 02:25 PM

Tho I must say it's weird that Maxtor's own utility (the one I posted SS from) shows capacity as 750gig too even though it shows the free space as 698gig on the right?

**no1_vern** · February 2nd, 2008, 02:33 PM

750 = total space
Formatting will reduce your usable space.
Usable space = 698 AFTER formatting

**excuzzzeme** · February 2nd, 2008, 02:39 PM

Don't forget that a percentage of the hard drive is reserved for bad sectors/tracks which also reduces the available size. This is not taken into account either. They are stating the max size and not usable size.

**EXreaction** · February 2nd, 2008, 03:00 PM

Originally Posted by Thunderchild

Damn liars aren't they

A gig is 1024mb in my mind as that's the numeration you get when you build up from the base of bits to bytes, to kb, to mb etc

Ok long is it's not fubar I can live with it.

Cheers lads.

No, they are not lying, MS is using the GB term wrong.

Gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes
Gibibyte = 1,073,741,824 bytes

**RetroEvolute** · February 2nd, 2008, 03:48 PM

Alright. After reading through this, I'm going to go ahead and say that if you combine no1_vern, excuzzzeme, and EXreaction's answers, it basically explains things properly.

Formatting will cut down on the maximum, then there are also reserved areas, and the differentiation between Gigabyte and Gibibyte is rarely explained.

**Thunderchild** · February 3rd, 2008, 08:34 AM

Yeh I understand the formatting side of things - it's normal - but 52gig is a lot to use, but then as you say, it's cross terminology messing things up.

Never mind its still HUGE

**Steve R Jones** · February 3rd, 2008, 08:40 AM

The recycle bin will reserver 10% of the drive and system resote will resever 12% of the drive and cause some of what you're seeing....You can adjust/turn off both of these

**staticfive** · February 8th, 2008, 09:35 PM

You guys are all wrong...except for EXreaction. Notice that all technology-quantized numbers are powers of two, i.e. 256 colors for a GIF, 2,048MB of RAM, etc. Hard drives work the same way because they have to be addressed by number systems that work in powers of two, hence, hexadecimal. If a computer could address file systems by addresses in perfect 1,000 MB chunks the system would be greatly hindered by additional overhead.

Think of it as overhead though--even though there actually is 750GB of storage on a drive, some of it is lost to file system fragmentation and general overhead.

And windows recycle bin and system restore most definitely DO NOT outright reserve 22% combined of your drive, that's just the maximum that it will use if necessary over time.

**pullmyfoot** · February 9th, 2008, 04:37 AM

Originally Posted by staticfive

You guys are all wrong...except for EXreaction. Notice that all technology-quantized numbers are powers of two, i.e. 256 colors for a GIF, 2,048MB of RAM, etc. Hard drives work the same way because they have to be addressed by number systems that work in powers of two, hence, hexadecimal. If a computer could address file systems by addresses in perfect 1,000 MB chunks the system would be greatly hindered by additional overhead.

Think of it as overhead though--even though there actually is 750GB of storage on a drive, some of it is lost to file system fragmentation and general overhead.

And windows recycle bin and system restore most definitely DO NOT outright reserve 22% combined of your drive, that's just the maximum that it will use if necessary over time.

thats interesting. care to explain more bout that overhead stuff?