Formatting Hard Disk

[noshali]

Hi,

Just wondering what is the best formattiing option for a hard disk so that performance and space is not compromised. I normally use the defualt for NTFS and a 300GB disk's formatted capacity becomes 280GB.

Just curious as 20GB is 5DVDs.

regards,

 

[ver0776]

Sorry man...

Also be sure to use proper math because HD manufacture's use 1000 per k, not 1024... It makes thier drives look bigger.

Your sector headers are going to eat up some space, but the difference in any format options would be irrelevant, stick with NTFS.

Vaughn

 

[noshali]

OK...

This is what the website says. If formatted capacity is 300 then there is no reason why it should eat up 20GB.

Formatted Gbytes (512 bytes/sector)* 300

regards,

 

[ver0776]

ok, here is what HDD companies use:
300,000,000,000
/1000
/1000
/1000
=300GB

Here is what your computer gives you:
300,000,000,000
/1024
/1024
/1024
=279GB

There is nothing you can do about it. There is already a lawsuit out there, but it is going no where because the top numbers are correct. The correct terminology for the base-2 equivalent of 2^30 is Gibibyte, or 1 GiB, not Gigabyte.

If you want to analyze a particular drive, give me the model or a link to its ad and we can check the terminology they use closer...

Vaughn

 

[noshali]

Gotcha...I was just curious as usual I thought that I was doing something wrong.

regards,

 

[PaulH]

Years ago I had a customer who brought back a 30 MEG Hard Drive for the same reason. We went 'round-n-'round with him. He kept insisting we were trying to pull a "bait and switch" on him. I finally just gave him back his money and sent him off to bother someone else.

 

[maximillian321]

Sometimes, in this life, you get what you pay for. and sometimes you don't. If you don't like what they've done; reference your hard drive, you can do one of two things. You can pound someones ear about it a little, which gets you nowhere. Or you can see your congressman and pound his table. If he doesn't give you a reasonable answer I'd not worry too much about it. In the great scheme of live, it is a mere trifle and not very tasty at that. Cheers. Mike of Wales.

 

[huggy59]

Also, "formatted capacity" means low-level formatting by the drive manufacturer, not the OS-level formatting which eats up room for the parameters and tables it needs to maintain files and such on the drive.

And for goodness sake, don't look at RAID 5... you won't like what you find! ;-)