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Topic: HD Size (Read 10534 times) previous topic - next topic
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HD Size

I bought a Seagate 160GB ATA HD and a USB 2.0 enclosure.  Now everything is plugged in and I'm in the Disk Managment part of the Administrative tools.  The disk only shows 128GB!  Is this normal?  Any idea what's going on and how I can fix it?

HD Size

Reply #1 –
Read this. This is for Windows 2000 - a similar problem (and knowledge base document) exists for Windows XP. You might also need to update your BIOS.

--jth

HD Size

Reply #2 –
jth makes a good point.... but even after that you won't see what you expect. Heh..... welcome to the wonderful world of Hard Disk marketing.....

Computer terms:
1 GB = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes  (base 2)
160GB = 171,798,691,840 bytes

Hard Disk marketing-speak:
1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (base 10)
160 GB = 160,000,000,000 bytes

Real world..... that disk has (exactly) 160,039,256,064 bytes on it for storage.... (just so happens that I have the SATA version of that drive) the HD manufacturers figure they'll do you a favor and round it off for you, and you get 160GB.

When your computer calculates it, you get the 160,039,256,064 divided by 2^30..... well..... it all works out to 149GB plus change (in the real world of binary computers), and once you get the patch loaded (or are running XP or another operating system) you'll see the 149GB figure.... maybe a little less depending on how you've partitioned it (partitioning and assigning logical drives takes some bit of overhead, usually covered in the rounding to the nearest base-2 unit)

Cheers,
D.

HD Size

Reply #3 –
I think the HDD manufacturers are correct, and that Windows (and, historically, most things to do with PCs) are simply wrong.

Still, we can avoid confusion:

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

(see especially "Historical Context")

Cheers,
David,

HD Size

Reply #4 –
My 120GB Barracuda is shown as 114GB...
Wanna buy a monkey?

HD Size

Reply #5 –
Quote
I think the HDD manufacturers are correct, and that Windows (and, historically, most things to do with PCs) are simply wrong.

Actually, it's the other way round ... although decimal-base prefixes like kilo and mega are 10^3 and 10^6 according to international rules of physics, the multiplier 2^10 (1024 - binary base) has been established in the world of digital data processing from the start ... so the system you deal with is actually not a decimal system where the multiplier would be 10^3.

the problem with only recognizing a 128 GB HDD even if the actual capacity is higher refers to Windows itself (limited standard 32-bit drive access and adressing) IIRC (or UDMA100 standard that is not able to handle more than 128 GB for the same limited 32-bit access) ... but you can switch windows to 48-Bit drive access to get full capacity of 160 decimal Gigabytes (should be 149 "binary" GBytes like cloudance mentioned)
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

HD Size

Reply #6 –
Quote
Quote
I think the HDD manufacturers are correct, and that Windows (and, historically, most things to do with PCs) are simply wrong.

Actually, it's the other way round ... although decimal-base prefixes like kilo and mega are 10^3 and 10^6 according to international rules of physics, the multiplier 2^10 (1024 - binary base) has been established in the world of digital data processing from the start

Just because something had been wrong "from the start" doesn't make it any less wrong!


Quote
... so the system you deal with is actually not a decimal system where the multiplier would be 10^3.


But the assumption that, in a "decimal system" k=10^3, and in a "binary system" k=2^10 is at best unhelpful, and at worst useless. It's quite apparent that there is no hard distinction between decimal and binary systems. All PCs are binary, all humans are decimal, but they interact!

It worked for a while where people used small numbers (just "k", not "M" or "G" of "T", so the discrepancy was small), and where the two "worlds" rarely met. Now it's just a confused mess.

Having different prefixes for binary versions does make sense, but it would make more sense if the computer world joined the rest of science and engineering and accepted 10^x where ever possible, and pointed out each isolated used of 2^x explicitly, writing it was 2^x rather than K or M or G or T.


(I'm surprised the weights and measures, and the advertising standards agencies haven't got together and sorted it out. In the UK, they smash the scale of people using the wrong weight measurement, so I'm sure they could turn their attention to this  )

Cheers,
David.

HD Size

Reply #7 –
Quote
All PCs are binary, all humans are decimal, but they interact!

The decimal/binary argument is so useless. And this statement is pretty daft, sorry 2B. Might as well say everyone speaks Greek just because it was the first language you learned.  Doesn't matter if it was wrong or right in the beginning, fact is it was the way it was, and still is, and likely always will be. A megabyte isn't 1,000,000 bytes and you know it, I know it, we all know it. Trying to argue about the origins of any given prefix is pointless, as the origins of the prefix are accepted fact as well. Computers are binary devices, they store things in binary numbers, so storage devices for computers should have their capacities listed in binary numbers. When's the last time you argued for people to say "440Hz minor" instead of "A minor" eh? Right, never. Just because the note A is 440Hz doesn't mean people go around referring to notes by their mathematical frequency, because the accepted means of reference in music are letters A-G. Accepted practice for referring to computer storage is binary numbers, period. Just because some marketing fools decided to do something else is meaningless.

HD Size

Reply #8 –
I also have a seagate 120 and it reports 111Mb in windows 2000 ???

Slightly offtopic - anyone know the maximum harddrive a 440LX motherboard can take ???

HD Size

Reply #9 –
there is a lawsuit against hd manufactures about this!!! I read it about 2 months ago!

oh and by the way kilobyte, megabyte and gigabyte are wrong anyway you noobs  (joking)

it should be really a kibi byte

mebi-, gibi- and tebi- would replace mega-, giga- and tera- according to the IEEE standart which are in place and have been for some time BUT

Quote
However, computer professionals generally dislike this unit (they say it sounds like a cat food) so the ambiguity in the size of a kilobyte persists.


http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictK.html

rofl. and I STUDY computer science and all text box teach me wrong

HD Size

Reply #10 –
Quote
oh and by the way kilobyte, megabyte and gigabyte are wrong anyway you noobs   (joking)

Well, I admire french people for using MO (MegaOctet) as a size unit in computer related discussions ...
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

HD Size

Reply #11 –
Quote
Slightly offtopic - anyone know the maximum harddrive a 440LX motherboard can take ???

20-40 GB should work with newest BIOS (I successfully worked an older IBM DJNA 153520 on my 440LX board - autodetection was no problem there), but in older UDMA33 mode only since I know no 440LX based board being capable of running UDMA66 (there were some 440BX boards IIRC)

If you want to use a bigger HDD, go for a PCI IDE controller like the Promise Ultra 133 TX2 or similar ...
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

HD Size

Reply #12 –
Quote
Quote
All PCs are binary, all humans are decimal, but they interact!

The decimal/binary argument is so useless. And this statement is pretty daft, sorry 2B. Might as well say everyone speaks Greek just because it was the first language you learned.  Doesn't matter if it was wrong or right in the beginning, fact is it was the way it was, and still is, and likely always will be. A megabyte isn't 1,000,000 bytes and you know it, I know it, we all know it. Trying to argue about the origins of any given prefix is pointless, as the origins of the prefix are accepted fact as well. Computers are binary devices, they store things in binary numbers, so storage devices for computers should have their capacities listed in binary numbers. When's the last time you argued for people to say "440Hz minor" instead of "A minor" eh? Right, never. Just because the note A is 440Hz doesn't mean people go around referring to notes by their mathematical frequency, because the accepted means of reference in music are letters A-G. Accepted practice for referring to computer storage is binary numbers, period.

Yes, historically that "was the way it was, and still is", and is very widely accepted and very well understood. There's no problem, never has been a problem, and apart from this there never will be a problem....


...except that we've all been using 1.44MB disks for nearly two decades, and sometimes wonder why 1.44MB doesn't fit onto them...

...and except that a 128kbps Windows Media Audio file is smaller than a 128kbps mp3 file...

...and except that, in any field where computers and engineering meet, you can't really be sure what the actual numbers are unless they're carefully specified.


Just because the data is binary doesn't mean the capacity should be expressed in "binary" multipliers. Especially if the capacity is not related to binary multipliers. (You didn't really mean binary numbers - 10010101000000101111100100000000000000B is hardly convenient!)


Think about how stupid the situation is: I have a 128kbps 44.1kHz mp3, and the two "k"s in that specification mean different things. This is science - not modern languages - I don't need context dependent symbols!


Anyway - as soon as Microsoft figures out that by switching capacity reports from powers of 2 to to powers of 10 they can report 2.4% bigger numbers, they'll go for it. "Windows 2005 - feature list.... .... * 2.4% increase to your existing HDD capacity"

Cheers,
David.

P.S. I think you'll win the argument by default. CS types never want to learn anything from good science or engineering. <ducks>. 
 

HD Size

Reply #13 –
I dunnoe. From the viewpoint of Comp. Sci, it makes more sense to use a binary based system rather than a decimal one, considering that binary is pretty much the base for all computers out there now ( pending the arrival of quantum computing ). I mean, why is time still measured in parts of 6 ( 60 secs, 24 hours, 60 minutes blah )? Because of convention 

I never knew about the IEEE standard though, but heck, not all IEEE standards have to be followed 

HD Size

Reply #14 –
OK...  I have XP SP1 installed.  I updated the atapi.sys file.  Then I used Seagate's DiskWizard to set up the drive.  I'm still only getting 128GB of space recognized.  I even tried setting up 2 partitions to see if I could get them to add up to more than 128GB with no luck.  I guess I'll try and update the system BIOS to see if that helps, but what are my other options?

HD Size

Reply #16 –
Quote
Which update did you get?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;812415

The one above is newer than any 3xxxxx hotfix  and supercedes(replaces) any previous hotfixes that updates atapi.sys.

My atapi.sys is now at version 5.1.2600.1135 as instructed here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...3&Product=winxp

The BIOS update did nothing.

I still don't understand how to "turn on" 48-bit Logical Block Addressing.  The KBA states:

Quote
Windows XP SP1 includes 48-bit LBA support for ATAPI disk drives. With this support, you can use hard disks that are larger than the current 137 GB limit. By default, support is enabled in SP1.


And yet my drive does not function properly on either of my XP SP1 computers with the required version Atapi.sys and latest BIOS updates.  Please tell me I didn't waist my cash on those extra 40GB.

HD Size

Reply #17 –
Try installing the update that I mentioned. It updates it to 1164 which is higher build version than 1135.

HD Size

Reply #18 –
2B, you missed the point entirely, which is that pretty much everything has a context factor to it whether you wish to accept that or not. And your kbps kHz example doesn't even work, since the k means the same thing in both instances, 1000. You wanna argue this all day, go right ahead, I see no point in it. Contexts are everywhere, your argument that they aren't is laughable. I like how you use a storage medium's size rating as a strike against storage medium size ratings, haha. Give it up.

HD Size

Reply #19 –
Quote
Try installing the update that I mentioned. It updates it to 1164 which is higher build version than 1135.

Installed...

No help...

Thanks anyway...

HD Size

Reply #20 –
Things I've tried to no avail...

1.  Maxtor's big_disk_enabler.exe
2. Intel's Application Acccelorator

I got the idea to try these from this site:
https://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor....php?p_faqid=960

I'm thinking this may be a problem with the ATA -> USB conversion.  I'm thinking this because the big_disk_enabler.exe tells me that 48-bit adressing was turned on.

Any thoughts?

HD Size

Reply #21 –
Edit - Why not try to partition the drive using a different program. The one you are using might not support drives over 137gb....

My BIOS states that it is capable of handling HDs larger than 137gb, but that doesn't mean anything for some reason, as it never showed the full space of my 160gb drive (only the first 137gb.) When I formatted the drive using the included ATA controller card (to get the full 160gb formatted) and hooked the HD back up to the motherboard (the card caused sound stuttering,) it worked fine until the drive filled up past 137gb. At that point in time, file after file started corrupting itself on my disk  . If the drive size shown is not remotely close to 160gb (it should show 149gb formatted....) I recommend that you try a new HD controller card.

HD Size

Reply #22 –
Quote
Any thoughts?

 
            This is strange alright.
            It might be possible that the external enclosure doesn't do 48bit LBA, but that doesn't make any sense really, since it's USB2.0.
It's also sort of odd that it shows 128GB and not 137GB (limit).

Have you tried hooking it up internally to try to format it there?

HD Size

Reply #23 –
Hi!
It's because Windows can recognize drives up to 137GB (32 bit addressing). You have to enable 48-bit logical addressing support.

Run regedit.exe and add following value: EnableBigLba=1
in
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters\

Make sure you have SP1 installed!!!

@dewey1973!
It's disabled by default even if SP1 is installed

HD Size

Reply #24 –
Quote
2B, you missed the point entirely, which is that pretty much everything has a context factor to it whether you wish to accept that or not. And your kbps kHz example doesn't even work, since the k means the same thing in both instances, 1000.

You're right - does that mean that mp3s aren't binary, or don't have anything to do with PCs? While WMA files do?

The conext isn't always clear - that's exactly the point.

Cheers,
David.