HardDrive gigabyte loss

[Sirius 16]

I recently bought a new harddrive for my Playstation 3. It had a capacity of 500 GB.

After installing it into my console, the system needed to format it. When it was done, I discovered to my great horror that up to 40 GB had been lost.

 

Is there any way to fix this?

[Arperum 3]

It is not lost, that 40 GB is used by your system to determine where everything is placed on your hard drive.

 

I'll try explaining how data is saved on a HD, then you'll understand.

Your HD is divided into sectors, wich are divided into compartiments(forgot the right name >_<) these compartiments all have an own address (like sector 5, ring 7, 9th compartiment) If you save something to your drive it is placed starting from such an address, and for allowing your software to ever find the file you want back later, the adress of the file is linked to in a specific part of your HD, wich obviously also uses space of it. wich result in a net "loss" of capacityof your drive.

 

And combine this with the different definitions of Gigabyte used by salesman and computers result in that 40 Gb "lost" data.

Salesman use the rule 1000 byte =1 Kb, 1000 Kb = 1 Mb, 1000Mb = 1Gb. for computers the rule is 1024 byte = 1Kb, 1024 Kb = 1Mb, 1024Mb = 1Gb.

Wich basically results in a Salesman Gb = 1.000.000.000 byte and a real Gb = 1.073.741.824 byte. That is already 73 Mb extra for a Salesman! times 500 gives 36 Salesman Gb. And then 4 more Gb for that data finding system of your drive gives your 40 Gb.

On my 1Tb dive I have 93 Gb "lost" because of this!

 

Hope this reply helps you understand.

 

Arp

 

Edit: It seems that the difference between salesman and real Gb makes the most loss. Didn't think it would be this bad o_O

 

So there is no solution at all, except for making salesman honest, wich is impossible.

 

Edit Edit: If you have/had the possibility too choose the formatting system, I suggest NTFS, as FAT32 doesn't allow files bigger then 4Gb. If you had and didn't know, and thus formatted in FAT32 I suggest rerformatting now that there isn't much, or no data on the drive yet.

Edited August 3, 2010 by Arperum

[Timotheus 416]

Nice job on explaining it Arp

Edited August 3, 2010 by Timotheus

[Arperum 3]

How big was the wall of text you edited out ? I'm curious now.

 

Sorry of off topic-ness.

[Rotluchs 82]

I recently bought a new harddrive for my Playstation 3. It had a capacity of 500 GB.

After installing it into my console, the system needed to format it. When it was done, I discovered to my great horror that up to 40 GB had been lost.

 

Is there any way to fix this?

 

no.

 

it results in 2 different ways of 'understanding' or 'measuring' the actual disk capacity..

 

harddisk manufacturers often use the standard decimal SI prefix for their drivers in advertising them,

 

however computers and operating systems use the binary system+prefix to show the same actual disk size.. due to this, whenever you install a harddrive, you'll see a loss in 'displayed' capacity..

 

 

 

 

it's a problem when calculating with/or displaying the 'multiple of a bit or byte' :

 

so in this case one GB generally would mean 10⁹ .. 'giga' (greek origin..) meaning = 1 000 000 000 ..this is the standard decimal system/ SI prefix used by HDD manufacturers as well.. so it labeled as a 500 GB drive..

 

however, computers, only knowing '0' and '1' so to speak, are using a binary system.. there, one MB is 2³⁰ , so the SI/Binary ratio is 0.9313 ..

 

that's also why the IEC and others would rather like manufacturers and everyone else to change the names of MB (megabyte) or GB (gigabyte) or TB (terabyte) ..

 

IEC binary prefixes if used for harddrives, would mean then: 2³⁰ = 1 Gibibyte = 1 GiB and so on..

 

also, after formatting depending on filesystem and Operating System you'd also loose a little bit of available disk space, resulting in a slightly lowered 'effective' capacity..

 

I don't know what the PS3 OS would 'reserve' , but iirc it uses FAT32 to format drives..

 

so if you'd see something like 465,65 'GB' this is quite normal and as expected ..

 

 

uh, well I hope I havent made too many mistakes, in trying to explain this, but it's something like that, most often the size shown in the OS will be less than on the drive label or its name ..

 

eg, in my case most often I'd see 'only' 1,36 TB for my 1,5 TB harddrive.. but that's still 1 500 299 390 976 bytes ..

 

edit: I spend too much time in watching TV and alt-tabing around elswhere ^^ see posts above, and forget mine.

Edited August 3, 2010 by Rotluchs

[Timotheus 416]

How big was the wall of text you edited out ? I'm curious now.

 

Sorry of off topic-ness.

 

Offtopic:

Only minor, I had to fix the s in from :thumbup:

[Sirius 16]

...And combine this with the different definitions of Gigabyte used by salesman and computers result in that 40 Gb "lost" data.

Salesman use the rule 1000 byte =1 Kb, 1000 Kb = 1 Mb, 1000Mb = 1Gb. for computers the rule is 1024 byte = 1Kb, 1024 Kb = 1Mb, 1024Mb = 1Gb.

Wich basically results in a Salesman Gb = 1.000.000.000 byte and a real Gb = 1.073.741.824 byte. That is already 73 Mb extra for a Salesman! times 500 gives 36 Salesman Gb. And then 4 more Gb for that data finding system of your drive gives your 40 Gb.

On my 1Tb dive I have 93 Gb "lost" because of this!...

 

Actually, 36 gigabyte is excactly the amount of GB "lost" in my 500 GB Harddrive.

Thank you for posting a really in-depth explanation, even though I read slower than a blind turtle.

[Arperum 3]

Actually, 36 gigabyte is excactly the amount of GB "lost" in my 500 GB Harddrive.

Thank you for posting a really in-depth explanation, even though I read slower than a blind turtle.

 

So it's only an evil salesman, no evil pc. We're in luck people! They are not taking over yet!

[Dragon Brother 619]

Actually, 36 gigabyte is excactly the amount of GB "lost" in my 500 GB Harddrive.

Thank you for posting a really in-depth explanation, even though I read slower than a blind turtle.

 

So it's only an evil salesman, no evil pc. We're in luck people! They are not taking over yet!

 

Yet

Edited August 5, 2010 by Dragon Brother