Member Avatar for newbie012

hi,

admittedly, i'm a only an intermediate with computers.... and i'm attempting to make my own external hard drive.

i just bought a 250 gb hard drive for backup. it's a hitachi sata hdd and i have a nexstar 3 sata enclosure. with such a big hard drive, do i need to set limits on the hdd when i format it? or can i just use windows xp to format the drive for me and leave it at that?

i have a feeling that if windows does it without any direction i might lose major storage space. please correct me if i'm wrong. thanks!

- out on a limb

  • 2 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 114 Views
  • 1 Week Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by goldeagle2005

Dani AI

Generated

As pointed out, the smaller number shown after formatting is expected and you do not need to "set limits" when formatting the drive — Windows will use the whole disk (subject to filesystem overhead and how sizes are reported). For a 250 GB drive the difference mostly comes from the two different ways people count bytes (see the concepts behind binary vs decimal units for storage), so the Explorer number will look smaller than the drive's advertised decimal capacity. More detail and the formal terms are explained here: Binary prefix and Gibibyte.

How to confirm exactly what you have:

  • Open Computer Management -> Disk Management to see the partitioning and total capacity (including unallocated space).
  • From a command prompt you can get the raw size in bytes; for example:
wmic diskdrive get model,size

The size column shows the real byte count the OS sees. Divide that number by 1024^3 to get the GiB value most Windows builds report.

Other practical notes:

  • Formatting consumes a small amount of space for filesystem metadata (MFT, allocation tables), so reported free space will be slightly less than the raw capacity.
  • On Windows XP, choose NTFS for large partitions (the GUI will not let you create FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB). MBR partitioning is fine for a 250 GB disk; GPT is only required for disks greater than ~2 TB.
  • If the reported capacity is wildly different (much smaller than expected), check for hidden partitions, enclosure/controller limitations (old USB/BIOS 28-bit LBA issues), or an HPA; otherwise the numbers you see are just unit/formatting effects and nothing is wrong.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for newbie012

Okay, I have proceeded to format and back up using Windows system tools. Just one more questions

1.) Is it normal to only hae 238 gb after fomatting a 250 gb hdd?

Member Avatar for goldeagle2005

Yes, it's normal. The descripancy arises because hard disk manufacturers advertise by saying 1 GB=1,000 MB but in reality, 1Gb=1,024MB

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.