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How-To Geek Forums » Windows XP

External Hardrives

(11 posts)
  • Started 1 year ago by falpizar
  • Latest reply from whs
  • Topic Viewed 574 times

falpizar
falpizar
Posts: 31

I have a question or better yet need confirmation. I just bought a 500g external hd, and it says that i have 465 free space, which means that the other gig's were taken up by something else.. could this something else be the preinstalled programs? but i mean over 30 gig's were needed? Sucks. But im just wondering.

Posted 1 year ago #
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whs
whs
Posts: 10354

No, what you bought is in decimal, what the system shows is in binary. There is a 7% difference. You still have 500GB decimal.
1KBytes is 1024 Bytes. To arrive at Giga, you have to multiply 3 times with 1024. If you do that with your 465, you'll get to 500. Confused?

Posted 1 year ago #
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elpaelpa
elpaelpa
Posts: 579

whs-Very confusing!If you convert decimal to binary (HD) and get a 93% difference with binary being the smaller figure,why is 1G of ram actually 1024 megs or 1.024G with binary being the larger figure?And to further confuse,when people talk of 20G download speed,is that number binary or decimal?My thinking has to have a serious flaw.Maybe a web site recommendation (this is called leaving ones self open)?

Posted 1 year ago #
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whs
whs
Posts: 10354

I never said 1G is 1024 megs. I said 1K is 1024 bytes. But if you want to do some studying, here you have a whole selection of webpages http://search.aol.com/aol/sear.....pe=msie70a Take your pick.

Posted 1 year ago #
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Budohorseman
Budohorseman
Posts: 761

Most like to market and advertise the one that sounds bigger than it actually is (you know it was a guy who came up with that way to describe the size of his hard drive) and actually get away with it.

Here is an old post on this topic with the explanations http://www.howtogeek.com/forum.....replies=44

And here is a chart that makes it all crystal clear.
http://xkcd.com/394/

Posted 1 year ago #
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whs
whs
Posts: 10354

I take 2 of the bakers kilobytes - lol

Posted 1 year ago #
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whs
whs
Posts: 10354

Since the post that Budohorseman referred to is very long, I have taken the liberty of copying the essential entry from ScottW for your convenience: I hope ScottW does not mind.
"It's the old GB vs gigabyte. If you look on any modern hard drive box, you'll see in fine print where they say GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. But, for computers a gigabyte is 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
So, if we take your 120 "GB" (120 billion bytes) and divide by 2^30 (1 gigabyte) we get 111.758, hence 111 gigs. Jack's 160 GB is 149.011 gigabytes.
For storage, remember that GB != gigabyte.
EDIT: I should have mentioned that a GB is 10^9 -- that makes it easier to punch into your calculator. You could also save the conversion multiplier, 10^9 / 2^30 = 0.931 to make it easier to compute the next time. You could also factor out the power of 2 from the base 10, but it doesn't make things easier. Man, I had a lotta math in school."

Posted 1 year ago #
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elpaelpa
elpaelpa
Posts: 579

whs-No,you never mentioned megs.Got that trying to figure out how I missed so much math.Thanks guys!

Posted 1 year ago #
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jack7h3r1pp3r
jack7h3r1pp3r
Posts: 2815

i think i remember that post. that was awhile ago lol

Posted 1 year ago #
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falpizar
falpizar
Posts: 31

i think i forgot to mention that i suck at math, mind you i work for the claims dept at an insurance company and half the time we have to figure out how the claims were processed and where we applied the member's benefits and percentage and stuff. sucks, but in the end it's all money, which i do know how to do. I really dislike that portion of the job, me and numbers had a fight a long time ago and we havent reconciled. I REALLY DISLIKE NUMBERS, too bad we're always surrounded by them.... but i get it though, between the decimal and binary, thanks you guys!!!

Posted 1 year ago #
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whs
whs
Posts: 10354

If you work in claims, you should have known. Because whenever I have a claim, I only get only half of what I was owed.

Posted 1 year ago #
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