Re: Quantum LPS240

[nathan@cco.caltech.edu (Nathan Mates)]

In article <31FE1726.205E@cardshow.com>,
Michael Guitton  <webmaster@cardshow.com> wrote:
>I have a QUANTUM LP240S GM24S01X Hard Drive mechanism and when =
>formatted, only :) 199MB are available. I thought the name meant "240MB =
>capacity". Is this normal?

   [Tip: turn off 'MIME' in your news posting software. That'll make
it much easier for most people to read your posts neatly, remove the
annoying ='s from the ends of your lines, and a lot more stuff.]

   HD manufacturers use 10^6 (1000^2) as what they call a megabyte;
computers use 1024^2. That translates to roughly an overstatement of
5%. Thus, a drive that says 240*10^6 should end up with approx 228MB
formatted capacity. There's always a little (<1MB) overhead for
drivers, partition maps, and the like. If it's a _really_ old drive
that decided to really flake out, it may be mapping out bad sectors as
unusable, reducing formatted capacity.

   What's more than likely is that the drive was improperly
partitioned to begin with-- they just didn't take full advantage of
the drive. Try backing up the HD, doing a low-level format and
repartition on it. The repartitioning tools should tell you how much
of the drive is really usable.

Nathan Mates
-- 
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
# And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the
# Kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in 
# parables" Mark 4:11, NRSV