[Wall]

I have a couple questions about an external hard drive that I purchased. It is an Iomega - Prestige 1TB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive. The first question I have is when I boot up my computer with te hard drive already on, my computer won't start -- it said in the manual that there may be some sort of complication, but didn't specify what that complication was, so I was curious why it did that? The correct to this issue was have the hard drive off when you boot up the computer. Then turn it on after the computer finishes loading. It works, but I'd still like to know the technical side of it.

The second question is, the hard drive is 1TB or 1,000 gigabytes of space, but when I mouse over the icon it only lists 932 gigs of space as the total size. I haven't put anything on the hard drive yet. So I'm curious what the space is used for... I'm thinking processing power? But I'm unsure.

Thank you

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I have a couple questions about an external hard drive that I purchased. It is an Iomega - Prestige 1TB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive. The first question I have is when I boot up my computer with te hard drive already on, my computer won't start -- it said in the manual that there may be some sort of complication, but didn't specify what that complication was, so I was curious why it did that? The correct to this issue was have the hard drive off when you boot up the computer. Then turn it on after the computer finishes loading. It works, but I'd still like to know the technical side of it.

The second question is, the hard drive is 1TB or 1,000 gigabytes of space, but when I mouse over the icon it only lists 932 gigs of space as the total size. I haven't put anything on the hard drive yet. So I'm curious what the space is used for... I'm thinking processing power? But I'm unsure.

Thank you

I am guessing, your computer has a boot from usb option and tries to boot from the drive. That is the only thing I can think of.

It deals with the different ways of defining a GB and up. As computers are binary the original systems powers of 2 to calculate denote the bytes. For example a kilobyte is about a 1024 bytes (about 100) a megabye is 1024*1024 bytes(so close to 1000000 but getting farther away). For a gigabyte, two different values emerge. MS contines to use the method of using powers of 2 and defines a gigabyte as 1024 megabytes, HD manufactureres though decided to use the actual proper value for Giga- and define it as 1000000000 bytes. Therefore, the higher you go the more you deviate from the proper value.

See here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

Edited by PedroDaGR8, 06 December 2008 - 12:50 AM.

[PedroDaGR8]

I have a couple questions about an external hard drive that I purchased. It is an Iomega - Prestige 1TB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive. The first question I have is when I boot up my computer with te hard drive already on, my computer won't start -- it said in the manual that there may be some sort of complication, but didn't specify what that complication was, so I was curious why it did that? The correct to this issue was have the hard drive off when you boot up the computer. Then turn it on after the computer finishes loading. It works, but I'd still like to know the technical side of it.

The second question is, the hard drive is 1TB or 1,000 gigabytes of space, but when I mouse over the icon it only lists 932 gigs of space as the total size. I haven't put anything on the hard drive yet. So I'm curious what the space is used for... I'm thinking processing power? But I'm unsure.

Thank you

I am guessing, your computer has a boot from usb option and tries to boot from the drive. That is the only thing I can think of.

It deals with the different ways of defining a GB and up. As computers are binary the original systems powers of 2 to calculate denote the bytes. For example a kilobyte is about a 1024 bytes (about 100) a megabye is 1024*1024 bytes(so close to 1000000 but getting farther away). For a gigabyte, two different values emerge. MS contines to use the method of using powers of 2 and defines a gigabyte as 1024 megabytes, HD manufactureres though decided to use the actual proper value for Giga- and define it as 1000000000 bytes. Therefore, the higher you go the more you deviate from the proper value.

See here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

Edited by PedroDaGR8, 06 December 2008 - 12:50 AM.

[SRX660]

Just a small note that on some motherboards you can take USB out of the boot order in the BIOS, and the computer will boot normally with the USB external drive turned on. This does not work on a few motherboards so downloading and reading the manual for your motherboard may help you find out.

SRX660