40 gb hard drive reporting only 38 gb?

[charliebrown]

Noticed something when I formatted my hard drive and did a fresh install of Windows XP....when I was asked to format the drive during XP installation, the drive size was not 40 gb, but rather 38 gb?  ANy idea as to what may be happening here?

Computer is Compaq EVO 500 CMT
1.8 ghz, 40 gb, 512 ram

Thanks in advance...maybe a "hidden" partition or???

[Shynnie]

Thats fine man. My Stick is writen 2gb but on the pc it reflects 1.9gb same aplies to hard drive and many that i have seen. Dont panic its cool. (other space for junk files)

[contrex]

The reason for the difference is that Hard Disk makers use the "decimal gigabyte" because it makes their drives sound bigger. File sizes, memory size, etc are usually measured using the "binary gigabyte" which is larger.

(1) decimal gigabyte...

1 Gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes

(2) binary gigabyte

1 Gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Seagate says my hard drive is 320 GB, but Windows sees it as having 298 GB.

It's normal.

[patio]

Chart courtesy of Western Digital

[xpart]

u see the size in bios setup. it will show it 40 gb. if it isn't then it is a problem

[contrex]

xpart, did you read the other answers before you posted?

[patio]

No.