there are two really well thought out answers to this, both saying the same thing, but slightly differently, so i will present them both.
Posted by Exo October 2 2004
The manufacturers state that 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (using base 10 "Decimal"), where-as Windows states that 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes (using base 2 "Binary"). Thus, a 40Gb HD in Windows would be just over 37Gb
In addition to this...
Some of the space is lost with the partitioning of the drive, setting the allocation tables and the like. This loss is more evident in High Density Floppy Disks; Unformated they have a 2Mb cappacity but when formated (IBM/DOS) they are limited to 1.44Mb, the same thing applies to HardDrives.
Posted by Zidric Feburary 14 2004
It's normal, thats what it's supposed to be.
It has to do with the way manufactures define a Gig. Most define it as 1 billion bytes. Most of the times you'll see it in the fine print "1gb is defined as 1 billion bytes" .
IriverAmerica says (in the fine print at the bottom of the page) "1GB equals 1,000,000,000 bytes, not all drive space is available for file storage".
In actuality 1gb= 1,073,741,824 (1024*1024*1024), 1024 mb in a gb * 1024 kb in a mb * 1024 bytes in a kb
1 billion * 20 = 20 billion bytes is the size of the ihp-120's hard drive
20 billion divided by 1073741824 is 18.626...
Therefore the hard drive size is 18.626 'real' gigabytes as far as Windows (and your files) are concerned.
The approx 0.026 GB will probably be used up with the overhead for the file system. (FAT)
You can see this by opening my computer - Right Clicking on the IHP Drive - Go to Properties, and look at the Capacity. My IHP-140 Says 39,989,706,752 Bytes 37.2GB.
So who the hell picked 1024? Well it has to do with binary. A binary table looks something like this:
1024 512 256 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
1 is represented as 1
2 is represented as 10
3 is represented as 11
4 is represented as 100
5 = 101, 6 = 110, 7 = 111, 8 = 1000
and so on...
You only can have 1 state, its either off or on (1 or 0). Notice the table numbers double as they go up. Anyways there's alot more to it and i'm probably rambling way over your head. If you want to check it out do some searches on google.
You can think of it like Ram size. Most people say "My computer has a gig of ram", actually its 1024. Ram comes in 256, 512, 1024... (old ram came in 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 etc.)
The short answer is it's normal, guess thats all you really needed but I thought I would let you know why.
That and SS is right, Windows likes to play tricks on you... DOS usually gives you a better answer (but not that msdos prompt crap they pawn off as DOS in windows).
Hope I didn't confuse you even more..
Wow, that search function is handy isnt it?
Hope these helped.
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