[oberlisc]

Hi Guys, I was having problems with an external HDD, the problem was Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATA in an external case when plugged it USB XP recognized it and said it was working fine but it didn't show in My Computer, sorted that after reading a few posts on here through Disk Management, the problem is it is only showing 465GB so any ideas how i can recover the missing 35GB.

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I am not familiar with the unit you have but NO hard drives ever provide what the sales people tell you it is.

The advertised size of hard drives is usually the UNFORMATTED size and while legal probably not a moral truth

Formatting ANY hard drive consumes space for various reasons (you can google the details)

You are probably not being dudded by XP ... but by convention

Good Luck

Baudy!

[baudwalker]

I am not familiar with the unit you have but NO hard drives ever provide what the sales people tell you it is.

The advertised size of hard drives is usually the UNFORMATTED size and while legal probably not a moral truth

Formatting ANY hard drive consumes space for various reasons (you can google the details)

You are probably not being dudded by XP ... but by convention

Good Luck

Baudy!

[SRX660]

Just for your information, Hard Drive manufacturers use the SI ( System International) measuring system which is metric, while Microsoft uses the Binary system. The difference is metric is 1000 for a megabyte, and 1024 is the binary for a megabyte. So what happens is you lose close to 7% of large gigabyte drive's size by converting to microsofts binary method of measurement. SO, 500 Gigabytes x 7% = 465 Gigabytes. You should have slightly less because of low level formatting done at the factorys. Terrabyte drive's can lose aroung 9%.

SRX660

[oberlisc]

Thanks for the replies, thats good or bad to know, but 35GB is a big loss of space on a HDD.

[Jonesey]

Thanks for the replies, thats good or bad to know, but 35GB is a big loss of space on a HDD.

You haven't lost anything!!!!

It wasn't there in the first place to lose - just remember that a Megabyte isn't 1000 bytes, it's 1024, or 2 to the power of 10 and what SRX660 says follows on directly from that.

[oberlisc]

Ok many thanks guys.