External hard drive - quick question...

thenap80

Hi

Just opened my new 1TB external Iomega hard drive.
When I look at the disc capacity in properties, it shows only 922GB.
Is this normal??

Thanks

nearlyrich

You always lose a bit for the software to run it not got any HD's that big so I can't check but there is always some missing don't panic!

bingo_bango

Always allow about 9% for drive files. My 320 Gb shows as 298Gb.

thenap80

Bimey....quick reply!!

While we are on the subject...is it possible to make some of the folders on the new drive private or password protected. I am trying to make my own files private but do not seem to be able to achieve it. ANy ideas?

Thanks again!

Barry

bingo_bango

loaner wrote: »

yep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte

Loaner.....

How have you been thanked in over 800 posts if you have only made 9?

Tag change?

Bob63

thenap80 wrote: »

While we are on the subject...is it possible to make some of the folders on the new drive private or password protected. I am trying to make my own files private but do not seem to be able to achieve it. ANy ideas?

http://www.truecrypt.org

Best software for doing this and completely free.

iviv

bingo_bango wrote: »

Always allow about 9% for drive files. My 320 Gb shows as 298Gb.

This is kinda right. The problem is that that computers view a byte as one thing, and hard drive manufacturers view it as something else (That conveniantly appears bigger).

In computer terms, there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte, 1024megabytes in a gigabyte, and so on.
But the hard drive manufacturers use base 10. 1000 bytes in a kilobyte, 1000 kilobytes in a megabyte and so on.

So this means when they advertise a 1Tb drive, its actually 1,000,000,000,000 bytes as opposed to 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. This last one is how big it would have to be to be reported as 1Tb by your computer.

esuhl

As iviv says, it's a way that manufacturers con consumers. In computing, engineering prefixes like kilo-, mega-, giga-, etc. have always referred to binary equivalents of the denary definitions (i.e. kilo means 2^10 instead of 10^3).

Outside computing, there has been a long history where the denary definitions were the only accepted ones, which is how manufacturers get away with it.

By the way a lower-case "b" means bit, so "Tb" is a terabit. "TB" would be a Terabyte...