Well this might sound a bit , ermmm stupid.
But I dont know how to devide an HD to sections.
I mean I do, when you install windows, then you can do it.
But I wanna but a new HD as a second physical HD and I want to devide it, and I only see the default "Format" and I don't see any option to devide that HD while formatting it.

Anyhow, anyone knows of a good tool to do that?
'Cause my current HD is missing around 6gb , and I don't want to repeat the mistake again.

how big is this hard drive, 80gb?

Well the current HD (the one that lost 6gb somehow) is 80gb.
The new one I wanna buy is 250gb
Both are WD HD's..
Why? does it matter? :O

www.google.com

look up partitioning

if it is an 80gb drive, then you will only see 74gb when it is formatted, this is normal. You "lose" 1.4gb for every 20gb of drive space because of the way the math/geometry work out

(this is how I could tell you have an 80gb drive, because you said you "lost" 6gb)

Why dont they make harddrives 7% bigger and market them as 7% less? It seems they should make 21.5gb drives and call them 20gb if thats the case. It seems misleading to call a drive 20GB when its not.

No, the space is there, there are 20 GB of bits. If you waste them on a file allocation table, that's your fault.

see what mar77a said ;)

how do u make them not "waste" that space?

when I funked up my PC, my uncle had this disk that I put in when reinstalling windows, and I got to set how much space I wanted on each drive

 Quote:Originally posted by livingdalifehow do u make them not "waste" that space?


Dont use an operating system....

man, I am still stuck here with a 12GB HD =/

Hahaha, I had hell trying to get Windows to recognize my 200 GB drive (something wrong with the maximum size that Windows or the BIOS expects you to have). I just upgraded something for my processor and tweaked the BIOS and everything worked fine. If your drive is that big, there should be a manual explaining how to partition it and everything. You don't need a program, Windows can do it on it's own, but a lot of good drives provide you with a CD that'll do everything for you.

 Quote:Originally posted by bja888
Dont use an operating system....


Better yet, learn how GB are calculated so you don't worry about losing something that was never there in the first place, especially when the conversion is placed on the hard drive box anyway.

Also when you try installing Windows as your base OS, Then install SuSE Linux 10 64- bit. It will automatically partition your hard drive, Windows has like 20GB and my Linux has like 34-44GB, making it a total of 64-74....... GB with 100GB HDD.

Hmm.... brb buying sledgehammer

You guys make me feel special.

Rarg, 80gb hard drive as well and I only just noticed that it was 74.5... fancy that.

 Quote:Originally posted by SwarmerWhy dont they make harddrives 7% bigger and market them as 7% less? It seems they should make 21.5gb drives and call them 20gb if thats the case. It seems misleading to call a drive 20GB when its not.


I figure I should explain why the don't do that. Quite simply, they are using a different system of measurement. Those familiar prefixes that we hear all the time in front of byte (kilo-, mega-, giga-) are all old Latin prefixes whose meanings are very well known: kilo is 10^3 (1000), mega is 10^6 (1,000,000), and giga is 10^9 (1,000,000,000)...essentially, each is 1000 of the one before it.

So here we have 1 gigabyte being 1,000,000,000 bytes.

But then the computer revolution came and people decided to use a different counting system based on the way computers work -- in binary. A large number like 2^10 (1024) needed a nice name for it and since it's approximately 1000, it got the kilo- prefix. 2^20 (1,048,576) became mega- because it's approximately 1,000,000. And 2^30 (1,073,741,824) became giga because it's close to 10^9.

So here we have 1 gigabyte being 1,073,741,824 bytes.

People in marketting aren't stupid. In a business where more storage is better, they use the system that makes it sound like their drives can hold more, so they use the base 10 system where they can have 73 million less bytes to make a gigabyte. It's perfectly legal because there isn't any standard way to measure bytes (unlike gasoline, for instance, which is measured in gallons in the U.S. and liters in Europe).

Meanwhile, your computer uses the other system because it actually works in a binary environment.

10^9 / 2^30 = .93 so you always lose 7% in the conversion.

Nice explanation Vijch

Yep, now everything makes sense...

So from what I understand, you're saying :
1- with a 250gb HD I should get an explaination and a CD of some sort to help me deal with the installation, unlike former HD's that I could just plug and play.

2- I didn't actually loose those 6gb, its just that my OS is using them?

And and that bloody marketing system is working in the internet buisness as well..
ppl are mislead to thinking "oh I have 1.5m/2m/3m connection " sounds alot (In Israel), when actually they download 185kbytes for the the 1.5mBIT connection.
Bits and Bytes are different , another way of those [CENSORED]s to fool us

aye. 1 byte == 8 bits

so 1Mbit == 128 KB (KByte)



so you guys know: lowercase b is used to represent bits. Uppercase B is used to represent Bytes


Thanks to vijcht for explaining something I really didn't feel like typing ;)

Not all that related to this, but if windows is installed without SP2 (or the fix) sometimes windows will not recognize a large partition.. I have a 200 gigabyte HD, I installed Windows with a [CENSORED]ty slipstreamed SP2 and I boot and have 130 gigabyte >_< I knew what vij just explained and was to lazy to do the maths.. (I'm VERY lazy at times)
Then I'd had it with wierd [CENSORED] happening and reinstalled windows, Ironicly with the same disc.. (tho it was now allready partitioned) and suddenly there were 60 free gigabyte... >_> Stupid..
Just thought I should mention that

My turn for bit conversions!
Internet speeds are measured in bits to make you think they are faster but you computer measures in bytes so they never match up.
A 56K connection is in bits, therefor your true speed is 7k in bytes.
When the cable company blows your mind telling you that you can have a 6Mb connection to your house. Its really only 750K.

Hurray for cheap marketing tricks!

 Quote:Originally posted by bja888My turn for bit conversions!
Internet speeds are measured in bits to make you think they are faster but you computer measures in bytes so they never match up.
A 56K connection is in bits, therefor your true speed is 7k in bytes.
When the cable company blows your mind telling you that you can have a 6Mb connection to your house. Its really only 750K.

Hurray for cheap marketing tricks!

That's not exactly a marketing trick, it's just that bit/second is the common way to describe transfer speeds.

Ok, your hard drive will most likely not come with a CD or other software. You can do all that (partition drives WHILE using Windows) with software that's already on your computer.
For Windows 2000 (it should be same for Windows XP) do this:
Start > Run > Type: diskmgmt.msc
Press enter. You will see all your drives. Double-check that you select the CORRECT hard drive (formatting your current drive isn't a good idea :P).
You can delete existing partitions or create new partitions out of unused space by right-clicking on those bars at the bottom. Make sure to use the NTFS file system unless you plan on using Linux later on.

 Quote:how do u make them not "waste" that space?
 Quote:If you waste them on a file allocation table, that's your fault.
You can't do anything about the 2^x / 10^x issue, but you can reduce the "waste" of space due to the file allocation table by using huge clusters, which in turn will waste space when you have many small files.

just to second what b00sta said, that isn't a marketing trick, it is just how the IT/comm. industry works, and there are many reasons for it