On Sunday 08 December 2002 12:25, David Corbin wrote:
[snip]
Well, About 3 gig is other partions, and it appears to me that the other 7G is lost to making the raid device and various overheads (though that sure seems excessive).
I think hardisk manufacturers use base 10, rather than base 2, when they speak of "mega" and "giga", ie. mega = 1000K and not 1024K. That means that a 120G hardisk is only 114.4G. Hence, 109.77G + about 3G = about 113G. Hmm, still about 1.5G missing.
They also quote the size before laying down timing tracks and bad block mappings -- along with the bad blocks. That accounts for another 10%.
Drives look kind of like modern lumber: you have to ignore the nominal size in your calculations and deal with finished size in order to plan for anything -- or just accept that 10% "shrinkage" is a normal part of life.
-- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582