How big is a 750gig drive?

[MCP]

On a harddrive rated at 750gig, what is the actual size after formatting?  The reason I ask is I just purchased a couple of Seagate 750 gig harddrives which had already been formatted and the actual size of each is 698gig.  That seems like an excessive loss.  So how much is lost to formatting?

MCP

[wyohman]

There's no loss. Hard drives are rated in what's called decimal bytes (1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte, 1000 kilo = mega, 1000 mega = giga and 1000 giga = tera) whereas most of us think of the rating in binary (1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte).

Cheers.

[T6]

"whereas most of us think of the rating in binary"

no, the problem is that in the factory(seagate in your case and in all brands) they count it as 1000 being a kilobyte but pc programs does it at 1024

correct me if im wrong please on this

750 gbs(the size the factory says you purchased) * 1000 = 750000 mbs

750000 mbs * 1000 =  750000000 kbs

750000000 kbs * 1000 = 750000000000 bytes counted as the factory does

now to "real" kilobytes(1024)

750000000000 bytes / 1024 = 732421875 kb

732421875 kb / 1024 = 715255.737304688 mbs

715255.737304688 mbs / 1024 = 698.491930962 gbs

around 698.5 gbs of usable space for user

a old trick form the companies to make you believe you are getting more for your money, similar to the megabits and megabytes on your internet connection

[jwt873]

FWIW, I have a pair of Western Digital 500GB drives and they indicate 465GB after formatting.

[MCP]

"whereas most of us think of the rating in binary"

no, the problem is that in the factory(seagate in your case and in all brands) they count it as 1000 being a kilobyte but pc programs does it at 1024

correct me if im wrong please on this

750 gbs(the size the factory says you purchased) * 1000 = 750000 mbs

750000 mbs * 1000 =  750000000 kbs

750000000 kbs * 1000 = 750000000000 bytes counted as the factory does

now to "real" kilobytes(1024)

750000000000 bytes / 1024 = 732421875 kb

732421875 kb / 1024 = 715255.737304688 mbs

715255.737304688 mbs / 1024 = 698.491930962 gbs

around 698.5 gbs of usable space for user

a old trick form the companies to make you believe you are getting more for your money, similar to the megabits and megabytes on your internet connection

Thanks for the explanation.  I was aware that 1024 is the measure used, it just seems like 50gig is a big difference between advertised size and and actual.

I now have another problem. I have been using 3 hddrives till now, and just added the 2 drives I mentioned (each 750gig sata drives).  So how would you recommend I use them?  I was thinking of installing a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64 to try out (don't worry I plan on keeping PCLOS as my primary OS) and then transferring my other OS's (PCLOS; XP etc) as well as my Data storage to these new drives.  That way I could free up one of my older drives to transfer to another pc.

So should I keep my present mbr setup and just add the new drives or adjust the bios to boot from the new drive and redo everything?  I assume that by making the new drive the boot drive all of my partition labels will change and as a result mess up a lot of settings. 

Please let me know what you think.

MCP

[T6]

"it just seems like 50gig is a big difference between advertised size and and actual."

imagine the people buying a usb flash drive with 128 mbs and getting less 

"and then transferring my other OS's (PCLOS; XP etc) as well as my Data storage to these new drives. "

transfer windows xp is kinda hard/impossible, a simple copy paste won't work, a partition cloning could help but i'm rusted on that

i think it should be easier to just install a new xp on the new hard disk and then copy what you need

about pclinux, remaster your installation could be your solution, clone the partition could be a option too but it depends on how you installed pclinux

whatever you decide do a backup first of your important files

[The Chief]

Thanks for the explanation.  I was aware that 1024 is the measure used, it just seems like 50gig is a big difference between advertised size and and actual.

It's no difference at all.  They are the same number of bytes, just measured in different units.

Which is heavier, 16 ounces or 1 pound?  Obviously the 16 ounces, right?  After all, 16 is more than 1, right?

[Bald Brick]

One might add that for years several international standards organizations have recommended that the term gigabyte (GB) be reserved for decimal gigabytes (or 1,000,000,000 bytes), while the traditional binary gigabyte (1,073,741,824 bytes) shouldn't be called a gigabyte at all, but a gibibyte -- with the abbreviation GiB.

[wyohman]

"whereas most of us think of the rating in binary"

no, the problem is that in the factory(seagate in your case and in all brands) they count it as 1000 being a kilobyte but pc programs does it at 1024

Isn't that exactly what I said?

Cheers.

[T6]

i analyzed the phrase for some time but understood it different from what i wrote, sorry if misunderstood you

[wyohman]

i analyzed the phrase for some time but understood it different from what i wrote, sorry if misunderstood you

No problem. I just thought it strange that someone quoted me and then said they exact same thing.

Cheers.