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

[Daly Jessup]

>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.

That's the overhead caused by the formatting of the disk. ALL disks 
show much lower available space after formatting.

As for 7 hours to zero the disk? That would be about normal. Just do 
it overnight. It has to write over every single bit of 750 GB. That's 
a LOT. Consider how long it takes to copy one gigabyte of data, then 
figure how long to write 750 GB.  Just do it overnight.

Daly
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