Why does so much gig space disapear after formatting a hard drive?
Davidz
and format it.
I loaded it as LBA mode and ended up with 74.5 GIG fat32.
Is there a better way to format this disk to get as close to the actual 80
size of this disk?
This question is actually about any hard drive in general. Is there a
standard method which will make sure the most amount of hard drive space is
used when formatting? I can't believe I lost so much space just to format a
disk.
Pen Stevens
sizes in Gigabits not Gigabytes. Divide 80 Gigabits by 1.024 3 times to get 74.5 Gigabytes.
"Davidz" <no...@none.com> wrote in message news:ar6jj1$9ol$1...@slb9.atl.mindspring.net...
Gareth Church
news:OZAB9.23368$6g.64...@news1.news.adelphia.net...
> Formatting has absolutely nothing to do with what you're seeing. Hard
drive makers specify drive
> sizes in Gigabits not Gigabytes. Divide 80 Gigabits by 1.024 3 times to
get 74.5 Gigabytes.
Just to clear some things up. There are 8 bits in a byte. If hard drives
were specified in terms of gigabits, your drive would be advertised as a 640
gig drive.
The point was right though. Only a little space is lost to formatting. Most
is because of the way marketers define a gigabyte. They use decimal
gigabytes - 1,000,000,000 bytes. We computing people know a real gigabyte is
binary. It is 1024 (bytes) * 1024 (kilobytes) * 1024 (megabytes) =
1,073,741,824 bytes. That's why Pen told you to divide by 1.024 three times.
As you can see, this is a pain. If you divide 1,000,000,000 by 1,073,741,824
you get 0.93... That means the drive you buy has 7% less space than you
think. It gets worse when we move to terabytes.
Some people have tried to make a new standard to stop the confusion. They
want gigabyte to mean a decimal gigabyte, and a new word called gibibyte
(from memory) to be used when talking about real gigabytes. Clearly that's
not going to happen, so we will continue to feel ripped off by marketting
scum when we buy a hard drive.
Gareth
Sunny
With FAT32, at a partition size of less than 8 GB, your minimum cluster
size is 4 KB per file cluster. This means that a 767-byte .lnk file is
allocated a single 4 KB cluster, and a 5 KB file is allocated two clusters,
thus taking up 8 KB of disk space. A 33-KB file is allocated nine clusters,
thus taking up 36 KB of space. Your hard disk thus wastes about four percent
of its space.
Between 8 GB and 16 GB, this minimum cluster size doubles to 8 KB.
Between 16 and 32 GB per partition, this minimum cluster size doubles again,
to 16 KB per cluster. Over 32 GB, it doubles again to 32 KB per cluster.
This means that the same 767 byte .lnk file on a 35 GB partition is
allocated not 4 KB of space, but 32 KB of space. The 5 KB file is allocated
not 8 KB (two clusters) of space, but one 32 KB cluster. The 33 KB file is
allocated 64 KB of space, and so on.
Suggestion: buy a copy of Partition Magic 6.0, and break that hard disk
up into partitions of about 7.5 GB each (i.e. just under 8 GB), in order
that you keep using 4 KB clusters on your spacious new hard disk. That is
the optimum use of the space on your hard disk.
An 8 gb partition creates the most efficient filing system.
When you start putting data on the hard drive, you will more than likely get :-
Partition Size Cluster Typical Amount
of Wasted space
512 MB - 8 GB 4K 4%
8 GB - 16 GB 8K 10%
16 GB - 32 GB 16K 25%
32 GB - 64 GB 32K 40%
"Davidz" <no...@none.com> wrote in message news:ar6jj1$9ol$1...@slb9.atl.mindspring.net...
Gareth Church
news:H%HB9.7306$nK4....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
Your percentages don't seem to be figured out in a consistent way. The
amount (and therefore percentage) of wasted space would depend on the number
of files. With a 4K cluster, for instance, you lose on average 2K of space
per file. The more files you have, the more space you lose. For your first
row (the 4%) you seem to have assumed that there are about 21,000 files per
gigabyte of space. Or, put another way, each file on the users disk is about
50K. (I might add that, looking at the number of files and space taken on my
drive, that seems to be a fair assumption). So that is fine, but when you
come to the last row (40%) you seem to be using a figure of ~26,000 files
per gigabyte, or 40K per file. If you were to use the same 21,000
files/gigabyte as for the first calculation then you get about 33%.
In any event, that is a fair bit of space to lose. I don't know that making
lots of small partitions is the answer. I know I would find that annoying,
and even impossible for some things I do. Plus, if you have the money for
PM, you could spend it on another HDD, they are cheap. I would suggest if
you are worried about lost space that you use NTFS (if you can, of course.
Win9x users can't). You can use a 4K cluster for your large drives so you
don't waste as much space. Plus you get the security benefits, no practical
file size limits, no performance degredation as you add more and more files
etc.
If anyone cares, the difference between 'size' and 'size on disk' that
Windows shows you is because of the lost space due to the cluster size. Size
is the total size of all the files you have selected. Size on disk is the
amount of space they take up, including space lost due to clusters not being
filled. Most of you probably knew that already, but I didn't realise that
for a long time.
Gareth
Davidz
74.5 Gig drive. But they call it a 80 Gig because of the way they round off
numbers for bit,bytes etc.. Is that the accurate way to understand it?
"Davidz" <no...@none.com> wrote in message
news:ar86ks$199$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net...
> So bottom line is I loose 5.5 GB on a 80 gig drive and there is nothing I
> can do about it. Is that right?
>
>
>
>
> "Sunny" <womba...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
> news:H%HB9.7306$nK4....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
Mark B.
and those that can't....
All of these details on cluster size and slack space and allocations....
wowzer.
I think that if you follow the advice to carve up that drive into 8 GB
partitions you'll create a filing nightmare.
With 80 GB hard drives at $100, who cares if you lose a little space? (I
remember the days when the biggest drive around was a 340 MB and it cost
about $600)
"Truth in advertising" is rare in the computer market. For years they've
been selling us hard drives that format to less than the advertised space,
so-called 17" monitors with "16.1" viewable" (it's there, we just can't see
it or use it?), 48x CD-ROM drives that are slower than their 12x cousins at
some tasks....just to name a few of the obvious.
Now, if one of you math wizards can convert 1.6L into CID, I just may go out
and check the Nissan....
"Sunny" <womba...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:H%HB9.7306$nK4....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
philo
if using FAT32, you could divide the drive up into
partitions of 32 gigs or less
or else you could use win2k or XP
and set your drive up as NTFS which can use larger partitions
with less wasted space
"Davidz" <no...@none.com> wrote in message
news:ar86rm$p9t$1...@slb9.atl.mindspring.net...
Davidz
can do about it. Is that right?
"Sunny" <womba...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:H%HB9.7306$nK4....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
Ken Blake
wrote:
> I think that if you follow the advice to carve up that drive
into 8 GB
> partitions you'll create a filing nightmare.
>
> With 80 GB hard drives at $100, who cares if you lose a little
space?
> (I remember the days when the biggest drive around was a 340 MB
and
> it cost about $600)
My sentiments exactly. Rather than worry about space lost to
slack and save a few dollars, spend a few more dollars to get a
slightly larger drive and keep a single partition. You'll end up
with around the same amount of usable space for a minor
additional cost, and not have to deal with the inconveniences of
multiple partitions.
Space lost to slack perhaps used to be a good argument for
multiple partitions back in the days of expensive drives, but
it's not any more. There are situations where multiple partitions
make sense for other reasons, but not to minimize slack.
--
Ken Blake
Please reply to the newsgroup
ChrisJ9876
>Or should I say, I NEVER HAD 80 gigs in the first place and it really is a
>74.5 Gig drive. But they call it a 80 Gig because of the way they round off
>numbers for bit,bytes etc.. Is that the accurate way to understand it?
>
>
Sort of.
1k = 1024 bytes
1meg = 1024 x 1024 = 1,048,576 bytes
1gig = 1024x1024x1024 = 1,073,741,824
Divide 80,000,000,000 by 1024 3 times and you wind up with
74.50580596923828125, or 74.5 gig.
The cluster size waste issue that all the other responders are discussing is
really unrelated to the above, and to your original question.
Hope this helps.
Chris
Davidz
Actually I'm not worried about saving space or having various partitions
etc. I just wanted to know if I understand the concept overall.
It sounds like everyone is saying that whatever is printed on a hard drive
as it's total size is really false because they advertise in gigabits rather
than gigabytes. So your hard drive size is always going to be smaller than
what is advertised. Also, the bigger the hard drive size advertised, the
bigger the difference in what you actually end up with.
Is this correct?
David : )
"Ken Blake" <kbl...@this.is.an.invalid.domain.com> wrote in message
news:utfc26d...@corp.supernews.com...
Sunny
"Davidz" <no...@none.com> wrote in message news:ar86rm$p9t$1...@slb9.atl.mindspring.net...
| Or should I say, I NEVER HAD 80 gigs in the first place and it really is a
| 74.5 Gig drive. But they call it a 80 Gig because of the way they round off
| numbers for bit,bytes etc.. Is that the accurate way to understand it?
That about sums it up. depends on the makers "maths".
Strangely enough I have two drives that windows reckons are close to the makers size e.g.
Maxtor 10Gb - Windows 9.5Gb
Quantum 20Gb - Windows 19Gb
As for the 8Gb partition size etc. it's something I would not do myself, I have enough flexibility with two hard drives
and two (CDROM - CDRW) optical drives. (I have seen one poster asking how he could name more partitions after
he had used each letter of the alphabet :-)
Gareth Church
>
> Actually I'm not worried about saving space or having various partitions
> etc. I just wanted to know if I understand the concept overall.
>
> It sounds like everyone is saying that whatever is printed on a hard drive
> as it's total size is really false because they advertise in gigabits
rather
> than gigabytes.
I think your understanding is right here, but terminology is off. Sunny
shouldn't have said gigabits (gigabit is a proper computing term. There are
exactly 8 bits in a byte. Since bits are so small we don't use them to refer
to hard drive sizes). The problem is that a real kilobyte is 2^10 bytes,
which is 1024. Marketting clowns instead use decimal - 10^3, which is 1000.
So a better term would be 'decimal gigabyte', or perhaps
'marketting-bastards gigabyte'.
> So your hard drive size is always going to be smaller than
> what is advertised.
Yes.
> Also, the bigger the hard drive size advertised, the
> bigger the difference in what you actually end up with.
Kinda. I don't know if I misled you on this or Sunny. Ignore the stuff about
cluster sizes and percentage of space lost. That is a different issue, and
it won't have an effect on your drive after a format - it will only have an
effect after you start adding files to the drive.
The problem gets worse as you move up. When you talk about kilobytes you are
comparing 1024 to 1000 - not a big difference (~2.4%). But when you move to
megabytes the difference gets amplified a little because of the
multiplication (1024*1024 compared to 1000*1000) - about a 4.7% difference.
Move up to gigabytes and it gets worse again (1024*1024*1024 compared to
1000*1000*1000) - about a 6.9% difference.
So a drive that is advertised in gigabytes will always be 6.9% smaller than
advertised - whether it be a 100GB drive or a 1GB drive. But if that 1GB
drive was actually advertised in megabytes, then the drive would be 4.7%
smaller.
I hope that hasn't confused you too much. I wasn't blessed with a concise
writing style.
Gareth
kony
>So bottom line is I loose 5.5 GB on a 80 gig drive and there is nothing I
>can do about it. Is that right?
>
Yes.
Or the more accurate way to look at it, is that it never was an 80GB
drive to start with, ALL HDD manufacturers incorrectly label their
drive's capacity, or rather they use the non-computer definition of
"giga" because it benefits them to do so.
Dave
__________________________
Please Reply to Newsgroup,
rickman
>
> "Davidz" <no...@none.com> wrote in message
> news:ar94r6$ts6$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
>
> > what is advertised.
>
> Yes.
>
> > Also, the bigger the hard drive size advertised, the
> > bigger the difference in what you actually end up with.
>
> Kinda. I don't know if I misled you on this or Sunny. Ignore the stuff about
> cluster sizes and percentage of space lost. That is a different issue, and
> it won't have an effect on your drive after a format - it will only have an
> effect after you start adding files to the drive.
>
> The problem gets worse as you move up. When you talk about kilobytes you are
> comparing 1024 to 1000 - not a big difference (~2.4%). But when you move to
> megabytes the difference gets amplified a little because of the
> multiplication (1024*1024 compared to 1000*1000) - about a 4.7% difference.
> Move up to gigabytes and it gets worse again (1024*1024*1024 compared to
> 1000*1000*1000) - about a 6.9% difference.
>
> So a drive that is advertised in gigabytes will always be 6.9% smaller than
> advertised - whether it be a 100GB drive or a 1GB drive. But if that 1GB
> drive was actually advertised in megabytes, then the drive would be 4.7%
> smaller.
>
> I hope that hasn't confused you too much. I wasn't blessed with a concise
> writing style.
>
> Gareth
What you said is correct. But I would just like to point out that the
HDD makers are actually using the GByte term correctly and it is all of
the computer people who use it incorrectly. Giga as a prefix means
1,000,000,000 as you point out. So the HDD makers are using it in the
"correct" way while the rest of us are using it as a binary power of
2^30 which is a convenient approximation, while not technically
correct.
I think someone in this thread posted how there is an effort by people
at NIST to coin new terms for binary prefixes of kibi, mebi and gibi for
computer work. It may not catch on, but as the numbers get larger, this
will be come more and more of an issue. As you stated, at Giga there is
a 7% difference which is becomming rather significant. Maybe that is
the reason that HDD capacity is growing so fast!! It is an illusion
from the distortion of the byte counts.
--
Rick "rickman" Collins
rick.c...@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.
Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
Davidz
Thanks to Everyone in this string! I now understand it.
Consider this string answered and completed.
Thanks again to all!
David :)
"rickman" <spamgo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3DD86782...@yahoo.com...
Doug Roberts
NTFS is far better but requires NT/XP
you can break down the size of the partitions. But then you hav lots of
small drives
Dougy
"Davidz" <no...@none.com> wrote in message
news:ar6jj1$9ol$1...@slb9.atl.mindspring.net...
Erik H.
"Sunny" <womba...@yahoo.com.au> schreef in bericht
news:O2VB9.10327$nK4....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
Hey that was me :)
But it was a hypothetical question. I actually have 8 partitions on 2 hard
drives, and my latest drive in Windows is I:. It's still an interesting
question IMHO. I might test it when fdisk/format my drive the next time.
Erik H.
example) 8KB clusters on a 40GB partition/drive? I believe I've seen some
option in some programs somewhere...
"Sunny" <womba...@yahoo.com.au> schreef in bericht
news:H%HB9.7306$nK4....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
CBFalconer
>
> Isn't it possible to override the default cluster size, and to use
> (for example) 8KB clusters on a 40GB partition/drive? I believe
> I've seen some option in some programs somewhere...
Please don't toppost.
No. FAT32 identifies clusters with a 32 bit number. 40 GB
divided into 8 KB clusters would require numbers up to 5,000,000.
These won't fit into 32 bits. That is why the magic 32G, 16G, and
8G limits exist.
--
Chuck F (cbfal...@yahoo.com) (cbfal...@worldnet.att.net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net> USE worldnet address!
rickman
>
> "Erik H." wrote:
> >
> > Isn't it possible to override the default cluster size, and to use
> > (for example) 8KB clusters on a 40GB partition/drive? I believe
> > I've seen some option in some programs somewhere...
>
> Please don't toppost.
>
> No. FAT32 identifies clusters with a 32 bit number. 40 GB
> divided into 8 KB clusters would require numbers up to 5,000,000.
> These won't fit into 32 bits. That is why the magic 32G, 16G, and
> 8G limits exist.
I want to talk to your math teacher!!! The last time I checked, 32
binary bits will hold numbers of about +- 2,000,000,000 or 0 to
4,000,000,000. I think 5,000,000 will fit in either of those very
nicely. So whatever the limitation is, it is not the number of clusters
being held in a 32 bit number.
CBFalconer
> CBFalconer wrote:
> > "Erik H." wrote:
> > >
> > > Isn't it possible to override the default cluster size, and to use
> > > (for example) 8KB clusters on a 40GB partition/drive? I believe
> > > I've seen some option in some programs somewhere...
> >
> > Please don't toppost.
> >
> > No. FAT32 identifies clusters with a 32 bit number. 40 GB
> > divided into 8 KB clusters would require numbers up to 5,000,000.
> > These won't fit into 32 bits. That is why the magic 32G, 16G, and
> > 8G limits exist.
>
> I want to talk to your math teacher!!! The last time I checked, 32
> binary bits will hold numbers of about +- 2,000,000,000 or 0 to
> 4,000,000,000. I think 5,000,000 will fit in either of those very
> nicely. So whatever the limitation is, it is not the number of clusters
> being held in a 32 bit number.
Woops - there is definitely something wrong there. I think it is
related to the fact that a sector is still 512 bytes. Lets think
about the FAT table size for an 8G drive in 2k clusters, needing
8*10e9 / 2e3 = 4e6 locations of 32 bits of 4 bytes each for 16e6
bytes just to store the table. Each table entry has to have
additional bits added to address a disk sector, and I don't know
what that width is using LBA.
I guess there ARE ways around it, but they don't sound pleasant.
V W Wall
This corresponds to 268,435,456 clusters. The minimun number of
clusters for FAT32 is 65526. The FAT only gives the address of a cluster
on the hard drive--it doesn't care how the heads and platters get there!
The clusters are then made large enough to accomodate all the drive sectors.
Finding the location on the disk is not a part of FAT, or of any file system.
Thats up to the BIOS, and sets the limits which any particular BIOS
can address. In addition MS has messed with the format and fdisk
programs so as to not allow drives larger than 32GB to be initially installed
on WinXP, though XP will work fine with larger drives.
Virg Wall
--
Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law
Sunny
"V W Wall" <vw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:3DD98B47...@earthlink.net...
|
| Finding the location on the disk is not a part of FAT, or of any file system.
| Thats up to the BIOS, and sets the limits which any particular BIOS
| can address. In addition MS has messed with the format and fdisk
| programs so as to not allow drives larger than 32GB to be initially installed
| on WinXP, though XP will work fine with larger drives.
Just in the interests of accuracy MS has changed Windows XP Installation "partition" (not the ability to recognise Drives) :-)
If you need to format a FAT32 volume greater than 32 GB, you can use a third-party partitioning utility to increase the size of the current Windows XP installation partition, or use the Fdisk utility on a Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk or a Microsoft Windows 98 Startup disk to reformat the hard disk entirely. For additional information about how to do this, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;255867
HTH
kinetic
"Erik H." <nos...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:3dd92b60$0$10849$8fcf...@news.wanadoo.nl...
> Hey that was me :)
> But it was a hypothetical question. I actually have 8 partitions on 2 hard
> drives, and my latest drive in Windows is I:. It's still an interesting
> question IMHO. I might test it when fdisk/format my drive the next time.
You can do it in 200/XP. It's one of the features that frees you from the
"limit" of 24 drives.
~ Jamie West
V W Wall
>
> "V W Wall" <vw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:3DD98B47...@earthlink.net...
> |
> | Finding the location on the disk is not a part of FAT, or of any file system.
> | Thats up to the BIOS, and sets the limits which any particular BIOS
> | can address. In addition MS has messed with the format and fdisk
> | programs so as to not allow drives larger than 32GB to be initially installed
> | on WinXP, though XP will work fine with larger drives.
>
> Just in the interests of accuracy MS has changed Windows XP Installation "partition" (not the ability to recognise Drives) :-)
You're quite right. I should have said "partition". WinXP will install
partitions
up to the capacity of the drive recognized by the BIOS. I've heard this was a
MS attempt to get everyone to use NTFS for partitions over 32GB.
Might mention that the "standard" versions of fdisk, have trouble with anything
over 64GB. MS provides alternative versions of fdisk, and they're many third
party programs available.
> If you need to format a FAT32 volume greater than 32 GB, you can use a third-party partitioning utility to increase the size of the current Windows XP installation partition, or use the Fdisk utility on a Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk or a Microsoft Windows 98 Startup disk to reformat the hard disk entirely. For additional information about how to do this, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;255867
> HTH
Trying this link, which is apparantly a re-issue of the KB file, resulted in
the info running off the right edge of my monitor. Was using Netscape 4.79--
maybe MS is telling me something? Will try again with MS IE.