hard disk size problem

[jimuck]

Need some help here. When i boot up the hard drive is recognised correctly as 3.228gb but when i go to fdisk it says it is only 3.08gb! any ideas? I have a pc chips 560 m/board.

James

[ajzchips]

It's correct. HDD manufacturers use 1MB = 1000KB instead of the "real" 1MB = 1024KB.

3.228 GB = 3228000 KB according to HDD manufacturers, but if the "real" conversion factor is used, then 3.228 GB shrinks to the "real" 3.078 GB, rounded off to 3.08 GB by FDISK.

[NickS]

It's correct. HDD manufacturers use 1MB = 1000KB instead of the "real" 1MB = 1024KB.

3.228 GB = 3228000 KB according to HDD manufacturers, but if the "real" conversion factor is used, then 3.228 GB shrinks to the "real" 3.078 GB, rounded off to 3.08 GB by FDISK.

Just to add to that, from http://www.forums.pctechguide.com/:
"International Electrotechnical Commission: the body that attempted to resolve the confusion surrounding the use of “MB” to mean either binary megabytes and decimal megabytes – depending on context – by their approval, in late 1998, of names and symbols for prefixes for binary multiples for use in the fields of data processing and data transmission. The acceptance of the symbols - “Ki”, “Mi”, “Gi” etc. – by the PC industry has been somewhat disappointing.
Kibibyte: a unit of measure consisting of 1024 bytes. One of the names and symbols for prefixes for binary multiples for use in the fields of data processing and data transmission approved as an IEC International Standard in December 1998. See also MiB, GiB and TiB."

[jimuck]

Thanks for the quick reply. never had this problem before, but this was an older drive I picked up for backup and I thought that something was wrong with part of it and was not showing up in the size. anyway all's well that end's well as they say.


James