Hardrive problems?!?!

[Duneguy]

alright when i bought my computer it had an 80 gig hard drive.. now its 70 whats happening?

[IxianMace]

Are you saying that you saw in the properties: Capacity: 80 GB?

Now you're seeing: Capacity: 70GB? :O ???

[VigilVirus]

Could be a virus.

[IxianMace]

Could be a virus.

Perhaps that virus could be the VigilVirus ^-^ (j/k). ;D Anyway, I don't know much about viruses, but if it was a virus, I think it would just consume space on the hard drive, and not reduce the capacity. :-

[Andrew]

You are all flawed.

i have a 80gb also and it says 70.1gb. not sure why, my best guess it the conversion between gb and bytes or something. you know when there is 1024 bytes in 1 kb..something like that.

it is a piss off how it does that. also false advertising in my opinion

[IxianMace]

Well yes, you're probably right in that then. I have a 40GB hard drive (according to what the package says anyway ::)) but the capacity is actually 37.2GB. Still, 10GB difference from 80GB to 70GB is pretty unreasonable for advertising to call it 80GB. >:(

[Andrew]

i know i dont see how they can advertise 80gb when there is no possible way that it is( when it is 70) we should sue everyone for that.

[ethan]

yeah, my 20 is a 18.4 and my 15 is a 14.2 . i wonder why they do that. should be false advertising. but i guess a MB is 1048 or something kbs, so that might do somehting.

[Oper90]

Every hard drive ever made stated xxx megs ... that number is before the drive has been formatted ... the formatting of the drive will eat into the xxx megs -- as to how much; it does depend on a couple of factors ... 1) hard drive size; 2) type of formatting used (currently there are 3, which depends on your operating system).

[Terror]

my 60 is 60.1 :)

80 giga referred as 70 is unreasonable as 70 x 1,024 = 71,68 giga which is still waaay off of 80...

aren't you sure it says that you have 70 gigabyte free out of 79 or something?

[Guest Eric E.]

Hello duneguy,

You could have the following problems:

-You got rigged and bought a lousy Harddisk

-You have a virus

-The OS you are currently running Could take about 4 Gb max. (Including all the updates) So you might have installed some other software that you are currently Un aware of

-You could have some programms that don't appear in the ''Software'' Section Due to lousy Programming.

I hope this will help you out

Until next post,

Eric E.

[Duneguy]

Well i know its not a virus... check that one off of the list...

yeah that helps.. is it possible that the space was lost when the initial product was installed : currently XP...

just an idea

[ethan]

Well i know its not a virus... check that one off of the list...

yeah that helps.. is it possible that the space was lost when the initial product was installed : currently XP...

just an idea

XP home takes 4GB. it says its taken up when you buy it, though.

[Andrew]

my windows directory only has 1.75 gb, and it is winxp home. although my computer had around 10gb used when i bought it refurbished.

[ethan]

my windows directory only has 1.75 gb, and it is winxp home. although my computer had around 10gb used when i bought it refurbished.

well, i have a dell, and it had some small business stuff on it

[Andrew]

in the windows directory?

yes my computer had lots of junk on it when i got it. got rid of most of it. it was a refurbished display computer so i got 10% off. weeeee!

[Nyarlathotep]

It has to do with what is actually a Megabyte (or GB) in mathmatical terms or by prefix definition. A real Megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes(2 to the 20th power). In the storage industry they go by 1,000,000 ( bytes as a Mb (1 million bytes) The computer Industry accepts both definitions although the first one is really the correct one in my opinion. Either way, your drive is being designated by 1,000,000 bytes per MB, and the OS and BIOS see it in terms of 1,048,576 bytes per MB. I wonder if the Industry will ever come together on one specification!

Its also a matter of marketing. The bigger the "marketing" size, the better. Right? At one time, vendors spec'ed their drives in "raw data" capacity. Formating reduces that to a useable formated size. Then as noted above there is the Mb and MB differance. Vendors tend to pick the number that makes them look better (untill you use it). Some utilites will give you both sizes. But by convention (and because programs are written by programmers who understand hex and the 256 multiples), the 1,048,576 bytes per 1 MB is used.

And let's not forget that the different formats, ie FAT16, FAT32, NTFS etc. waste some space. It's a fact of life (unfortunately).

[Terror]

true... fat 32 frees a lot extra space compared to fat16.. you might indeed check that first...

[Duneguy]

mine has NTFS i belive.

[Nyarlathotep]

Doesn't matter what you have, either way there's not much we can change about it. The only thing you could try is to find a 3rd party program that let's you partition and format your harddrive and get's closer to the harddrives full capacity.

It's just that software and hardware manufacturers are working according to different standards, resulting in the problems outlined above.

[Terror]

oh btw nyar, i have this strange HD problem... it not a harddisk crash (for gods sake no)... i just have a lazy harddrive... when i start up my pc my comp checks if everything is working and usually it is ok.. but sometimes (perhaps 1 out of 10 times :) ) the HD just sleeps.. after like 15 seconds it starts waking up but then the computer quits controlling and gives me a warning... when i reboot it's all fine.. it's just annoying

and since a week or 2 it sometimes also makes funny noise and when i reboot like 2 times or something the noise is gone

[Nyarlathotep]

Are you sure the noise is comming from the harddrive and not from a fan ?

[Terror]

yes, perhaps. i did think about that. but the strange thing is, is that the noise only stops when i reboot the system...

but i guess you're right.. i'll check my pc from the inside.. perhaps i can find something there (probably a spider corpse hanging around in my fan)

[Nyarlathotep]

If it IS your harddrive, make sure you have a backup in case it fails...

[lowzeewee]

Whenever I insert the disc,i also get the funny sound.But when I take out the disc and re-place it back in,it loads and brrrrrr there it goes again......