Cloning to a second hard drive.

[Matt555]

Hehe, Maths helps with the 'formulas' and the IDE diagrams are just what came to my mind first. I'm glad I could help you out.
:good:

 

[DavidNW]

Hehe, Maths helps with the 'formulas' and the IDE diagrams are just what came to my mind first. I'm glad I could help you out.
:good:

Hello, everyone.

Now, just when I thought we had figured out HD capacities with a little help from everyone. Another anomaly has reared its head! Looking in 'My Computer' at my 40GB external drive I see that it tells me that I have 184MBs of used space. There's nothing on the drive, so this rather perplexes me.

The drive's capacity in bytes is: 39,999,500,288. The 'used space' equates to: 193,667,072 bytes, which is equal to 184MB. As I said, I have deleted all files from the drive, and yet, there’s 184MB of 'used space.' Anyone know what's going on here, as it would be interesting to find an explanation?

Cheers,

Dave.

 

[pelvis_3]

Sounds like some hidden files are still there.
In explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options, click on the View tab and select 'Show hidden files and folders'. If there still aren't any files showing, i'd suggest a low level format.

 

[DavidNW]

Sounds like some hidden files are still there.
In explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options, click on the View tab and select 'Show hidden files and folders'. If there still aren't any files showing, i'd suggest a low level format.

Thanks, Pelvis.

I'll check that out. Subsequently, another school of thought thinks the formatting process of HDs may impact on loss of HD space.

Cheers,

Dave.

 

[DavidNW]

Thanks, Pelvis.

I'll check that out. Subsequently, another school of thought thinks the formatting process of HDs may impact on loss of HD space.

Cheers,

Dave.

Subsequently, I think I may have found out that the formatting of a disk results in some loss of space. The explanation is a bit long-winded, so click this link if you're interested http://www.pcmech.com/show//67/ I'm not sure if this is the reason why HDs seem to lose space, but it seems feasable.

Cheers,

Dave

 

[Weeman5872]

Okay 80GB from a manufacturer is using 1000 bytes as a kilobyte.

so:
1MB = 1000 x 1000
1GB = 1000 x 1000 x 1000
80GB = 1000 x 1000 x 1000 x 80

Which is 80,000,000,000
So an 80GB hard drive from the manufacturer actually contains 80,000,000,000 bytes.

The OS uses the calculations with 1024 byes = 1 kilobyte.

so:
1MB = 1024 x 1024
1GB = 1024 x 1024 x 1024
80GB = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 x 80

So a true 80GB is 85,899,345,920 bytes.

However the HDD only has 80,000,000,000 bytes meaning it has less space than the 80GB the manufacturer quotes.

If the HDD has 74.5GB space (as the OS reads it) then:

1024 x 1024 x 1024 x 74.5 is almost equal to 80,000,000,000 (actual answer is 79,993,765,890)

Does that make it clearer?

I could be wrong, but what if the manufacturers calculate the capacity of the HDD's in Bit's rather than Bytes.

so:

1 Kilobit = 1000 Bit
1 Megabit = 1000x1000
1 Gigabit = 1000x1000x1000
80 Gigabit = 1000x1000x1000x80

so 80 gigabit = 80 000 000 000 Bit = 74.5 Gigabyte

and they could put 80Gb on the box meaning 80 Gigabit instead of 80 Gigabyte, just a thaught, but i could be wrong.

 

[Matt555]

I could be wrong, but what if the manufacturers calculate the capacity of the HDD's in bit's rather than bytes.

so:

1 kilobit = 1000 bit
1 megabit = 1000x1000
1 gigabit = 1000x1000x1000
80 gigabit = 1000x1000x1000x80

so 80gigabit = 80 000 000 000 bit

and they could put 80Gb on the box meaning 80Gigabit instead of 80 Gigabyte, just a thaught, but i could be wrong.

They don't, as 1byte = 8bits - so an 80Gb Hard drive is only equal to 10GB.

They don't do it like that.

 

[Weeman5872]

ahh i see, my mistake

there is one query i have though, on this desktop, i have 80GB HDD (which appears as 74.5GB) but on another desktop i had, it had an 80GB HDD, but in windows, it appeared as ~76GB, and on a vista laptop i have, the hdd is 80GB, but appears as 67.6GB, any ideas? (they all use the full hdd as one partition)