OS shows incorrect HD size

S

songwritingguy

Geek Trainee
Greetings!
I just built my first custom PC and everything is fine with the exception of one problem. I have a Hitachi 60GB Master HD (Disk 0)that shows 57.2 GB once installed. No problem. However, my Hitachi 160GB Slave HD (Disk 1)when installed, shows 128GB Unallocated. I realize that formatting uses some space, but why did I loose 30GB?

I've checked my jumpers and they are correct. I thought that maybe the HD was labeled with the wrong size info, but when I go to my BIOS, it does show that it's a 160GB drive. What should I do?

thanks,
Drew
 
songwritingguy said:
Greetings!
I just built my first custom PC and everything is fine with the exception of one problem. I have a Hitachi 60GB Master HD (Disk 0)that shows 57.2 GB once installed. No problem. However, my Hitachi 160GB Slave HD (Disk 1)when installed, shows 128GB Unallocated. I realize that formatting uses some space, but why did I loose 30GB?

I've checked my jumpers and they are correct. I thought that maybe the HD was labeled with the wrong size info, but when I go to my BIOS, it does show that it's a 160GB drive. What should I do?

thanks,
Drew
Click to expand...
It's worth noting that since the NTFS file system does do some basic journalling, it reserves 12.5% of your total volume size to manage that volume:

160GB - 12.5% = 128GB

It is a bit strange to me that NTFS would need so much space for journalling, since other (better) journalling filesystems use much less space. For instance, the much more robust EXT3 filesystem (Linux/Unix/BSD) uses less to do more, with superior journalling features. That's MS for you, I guess. But, the bottom line is that NTFS is supposed to eat up that much space, so your 128GB figure is in fact correct.

For information on how to get the most out of your NTFS filesystem, visit ntfs.com.
 
Thanks for the help. Anti-Trend - I appreciate what you're saying, but your example of 160GB - 12.5% = 128GB does not calculate. 12.5% of 160 is 20, therefore, I should still have 140GB left. Correct?
 
songwritingguy said:
Thanks for the help. Anti-Trend - I appreciate what you're saying, but your example of 160GB - 12.5% = 128GB does not calculate. 12.5% of 160 is 20, therefore, I should still have 140GB left. Correct?
Click to expand...
Actually, the MFT size is variable:

NTFS.com said:
Starting from Windows NT 4.0 SP4 you can define MFT Zone Reservation value through the Registry.
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
Value NtfsMftZoneReservation of DWORD type (1 to 4) allows you to specify MFT Zone for the newly created/formatted volumes(12.5 percent, 25 percent, 37.5 percent, 50 percent of NTFS volume accordingly)
Click to expand...
 
Problem solved! As it turns out, I actually did not have SP1 downloaded on my XP Home OS. As soon as I downloaded the patch, this slave HD showed 153GB. Appreciate your help and advice!
Drew
 
songwritingguy said:
Problem solved! As it turns out, I actually did not have SP1 downloaded on my XP Home OS. As soon as I downloaded the patch, this slave HD showed 153GB. Appreciate your help and advice!
Drew
Click to expand...
Great, glad you got it worked out! Also, please check out our SP2 thread before patching to SP2!
 
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