200 Gb Hard Drive only showing 127Gb on Win Xp

[Nikkon]

"thats because windows won't use more than 127gb on a single partition. what you have to do is make sure that no partition is larger than 127gb. thats just the way windows is."

This is only for pre service pack 1. If you update windows to service pack 1 windows will register a partition larger than 137 MB

 

[xotix]

didn't know that at all, and your sure about that nikkon??

 

[ShoobieRat]

Nikkon is right. Windows (with SP1-2) can "see" up to 250g or more on a single drive. The "only 127g limit" is an outdated fact.

As for drives being rounded to nice clean numbers (80, 120, 200, etc), that's a math issue that marketing (ALL drive manufacturers) have resolved by rounding the number to the nearest 10 to make things easier on us consumers. If you do the math, you'll know that what you're seeing on the box is a "clean" number, and not the actual limit. The actual limit would be nuts to try and market.

 

[compy]

then why do they do it on the wd raptors?

 

[Nikkon]

Partitions take space, so when you look at your drives in My Computer the number you see isnt going to be the 80, 120, 150 GB you purchased.

 

[jolancer]

the limitation applying only to pre sp1 is shown here... Link

the difference in the size that u c wen u by, and the size that windows shows u is the diff between 'binary and decimal'. the diff is 1kb actaully equals 1024 bytes instead of 1000. formating also takes away some space, i dont know how to calculate that part, so i just do this...

since i know 120gig formated = 111gig.

200gig x 111 / 120 = 185gig

so the 200 will endup formating to 185gigs

 

[koldapu]

no regulus, thats a different thing. an 80gb hard drive is a 74.5gb hard drive. 80gb is 74500mb. so thats wat ur going to see.

one partition can't be more that 127gb for windows.

actually, 80000mb = 76.9GB

 

[jolancer]

actually, 80000mb = 76.9GB

not after formating, after format its right about 74gig

 

[koldapu]

well yeah, after formatting, but before its 76.9 . . .

instead of saying 80GB, they should just say 80,000,000,000 bytes . . .

 

[xotix]

they can't say that koldapu, because 80 gb is not 80,000,000,000 bytes.