How big does a 200gig show in windows?

[Bizkitkid2001]

I got my 200gig installed and working today, but its only showing up as 186gig. From my calculations it should be showing up as 195gig. Do 200gigs normally show up as 186gig? Or do I need to download some software for windows xp to recgnize my hard drive as a 200gig. My hard drive is running through a controller card.

[originel]

i'm assuming your running ntfs on it. if so then XP should calculate the absolute largest size possible. have you gone in through the admininistrative tools->computer management->disk management to see what's going on?

And in all reality 186 sounds perfectly reasonable to me. My 40gb shows up as a 37gb.

[Gettinbye]

I would think your drive should show 195.3g (according to the 1024 rule). You might check the manufacturers website to see if there is any software needed to see the full capacity of the drive.
Another thing that may or may not have a bearing on this (I'm sure someone else here would know) is your cluster size.

[Bizkitkid2001]

Yeah i went into diskmanager and checked it. it sais 186gig. Also, when it got to %100 formated it said "format was unsuccesful" So it still does not have an ntfs file system on it.

[Bizkitkid2001]

i reinstalled the controller card drivers, i think i might have installed the windows 2000 drivers isntead of the XP drivers. I am reformatting and will see if it is able to format the drive this time.

[jmichna]

Originally posted by Gettinbye
I would think your drive should show 195.3g (according to the 1024 rule)....

Almost got it, but not quite:
Originally, Bytes, KB, MB, GB, etc. were calculated from binary:
1024 B = 1 KB
1024 kB = 1 MB (or, 1024 x 1024 B)
1024 mB = 1 GB (or 1024 x 1024 x 1024 B) = 1,073,741,824 Bytes

Several years back, some official (technical or trade) organization (don't recall right now what the name is) re-defined the standard capacity descriptions for hard drives based on a decimal system e.g.,
1000 B = 1 KB
1000 KB = 1 MB
1000 MB = 1 GB (or 1000 x 1000 x 1000) = 1,000,000,000 Bytes
so, a "200 GB" -- as defined by the industry -- drive would actually contain 200,000,000,000 Bytes

The hardware, however, doesn't read the "official" definition, and still calculates and produces usable capacity based on binary:

200,000,000,000 B / 1024 = 195,312,500 KB
195,312,500 KB / 1024 = 190,734.86 MB
190,734.86 MB / 1024 = 186.264 GB

Anyway, that is the gist of the whole capacity misunderstanding.. terribly misleading (makes the published capacities appear larger), and -- IMO -- we should have stuck to the original definitions.

Very nice explanation.

[jmichna]

Originally posted by EvilRick
Very nice explanation.

I blush...
T.Y.

[elroy]

For comparison:
My 160gb formatted in FAT32 shows 152gb.

[thronka]

same cluster format for fat32 and ntfs. only difference is that ntfs provides security.