[X4U] External HD: 750 gig to 699 when formatted. Why???

[Jens Selvig]

You have been bitten by 'marketing speak' used by most if not all of  
the hard drive manufacturers. They report the size of the drives using  
1 gig to mean 1000 megabytes while the computer looks at 1 gig as 1024  
megabytes. So much of the problem comes in converting from base 2 to  
base 10.

Plus there is a fairly large amount of 'house keeping' space used up  
on the drive to account for the difference in size. :)

Jens


On May 24, 2009, at 11:27 AM, Germain M. wrote:

> Hello,
> I bought a SimpleTech 750gig external HD. It was Windows formatted  
> in the first place. Once mounted, info window showed the drive had  
> 699 gig free. As suggested in the instruction manual (and as should  
> be done) anyway), I reformated the drive Mac OS Extended journaled.  
> Still 699 gig free. Is there a way te recover this huge amount of  
> lost gig? What are they used for and by what (whom)? Are there some  
> hidden Windows programs and files left on the HD. If so, how to et  
> rid of them to recover that space?
>
> First, I wanted to format the drivve with the "zero" option in Disk  
> Utility but it told me ot would take 7 hours and I didn't want to  
> wait. This is the very first external HD I buy.
>
> Thanks a lot. Germain
>
>
> iMac Intel 2.0 ghz
> 1 gig Ram, 160 GB HD
> 10.4.11 français
>
>
>
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Jens Selvig
...Lost in Montana...