2006-06-20 21:42:05 · 6 answers · asked by Fernando Alonso 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
All the answers are wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG
Some of the spaace on the harddrive is reserved for system files that is correct, but not 8GB of your 160GB drive.
There is much confusion due to drive manufactures using one standard to quote drive size whuile the software vendors use another standard.
This confusion is created due to the fact that in SI notation 1 kilobyte can be 1000 byte or 1024 bytes can be 1 kilobyte. The manufactures take the number of bytes the harddrive can store and divide by 1000^3(power of three) to quote a Gigabyte valueclose to an acceptable norm. Your operating system must use binary so it will take the maximum byte available for storage and divide by a 1024^3 to get the true gigabyte value ot Gibibyte value.
Let me demonstrate (i will use my 80 GB drive becuase i dont know what the maximum amount of bytes are that your drive can store)
My 80Gb drive can store 80015491072 bytes, i divide that by 1000^3, and wow it's 80,015491072 Gigabytes. Now i take it like the operating system actually uses it. 80015491072 bytes divide by 1024^3, what's this i have been screwed, my drive is only 74.520233154296875 Giga bytes (GiB).
Lets speculate about your 160GB drive, lets say it takes 163208757248 bytes (you know it's more or less right), i divide it by 1024^3, and i get 152 Gigabytes(GiB) exactly (yes i used 152 times 1024^3). I am supprised the manufacture didn't sell it as a 163 GB drive.
So you see it's not system files it's standards war, between Binary and SI notation, started in the 1990's when hard drives started coming to market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
I don't mean to be forward but can i have 10 points now?
2006-06-25 11:08:04 · answer #1 · answered by jason b 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Dats correct, bcos, the remaining capacity is used as partition and file systems to run the system rite from the start.
2006-06-21 04:49:30 · answer #2 · answered by raventrick 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I guess the Harddrive reserves some space for system files, thus you dont see the full capcity of the drive.
Cheers !!!!
2006-06-21 04:51:23 · answer #3 · answered by Seven double O 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yeah It will Show 152GB 8GB is Used By file system.
2006-06-21 04:45:44 · answer #4 · answered by Khushwant Singh 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Your Motherboard BIOS is not recognising the other 8gb thats all
2006-06-21 04:47:48 · answer #5 · answered by Joe_Young 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hello, its normal things, you wont get the full capacity whether you buy 512MB or 160GB, EG: if you buy 80GB u get around 70GB.
2006-06-21 04:47:02 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋