Where is my 8.3GBs?
I was reading my Maximum PC magazine lastnight and there was an article in the WatchDog column. A gentleman bought a WD 120GB hard drive and when he installed it and formatted it, it read 111.7GBs. Of course, he felt cheated and wanted to know what the deal was. Well, it turns out that hard drive manufactures use the proper name for their measurement, GigaBytes, meaning 109. Microsft uses a measurement called GibiBytes, meaning 230. Clearly there is a difference in the to values and that is where the lost storage is. I have found an article on AnandTech.com that should help clear up the confusion.