I just purchaced a 160GB HD. When I and format it (with the Windows XP installer) it only reports that the drive is 152,000 MB, or 149GB. I know that the formatted capacity of an HD is less than the unformatted (advertised) capacity of the drive, but a whole 11GB seems like quite a bit, doesn't it? Is there something wrong with the drive? Should I have formatted it with the included CD instad of using Windows XP setup to format it? Thanks for any advice!! -MikeG Dell Dimension 8200 / iMac G3 350MHz 2.53GHz Pentium 4 w/533MHZ FSB 768MB PC800 RDRAM GeForce 4 TI 4600 120GB HD

It's all about marketing. 149GB is 159,987,531,776 bytes which is close enough to 160 billion bytes, therefore the manufacturer will call it 160 GB. They all do it! This problem stems from the fact that there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte etc. Naturally, marketers will chose the method of reporting which gives the largest figure. I bet you wouldn't have bought that drive if it said it was a 149GB drive.

And this is why back in 2003 the PC Makers were sued over hard drive sizes. For some funny reading, (Click me). i_XpUser

Thanks for the replies. Should have figured that out myself knowing that 1000MB doesn't exactly equal a gig. Thanks again. -MikeG Dell Dimension 8200 / iMac G3 350MHz 2.53GHz Pentium 4 w/533MHZ FSB 768MB PC800 RDRAM GeForce 4 TI 4600 120GB HD