External harddrive missing GB ?

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pctong

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#30805 21-Feb-2009 21:27

Hello Everyone

I have bought a western digital element external harddrive. On the box it says 640GB. But when I connect it to my computer, it says just under 600GB ??? Why, is the HDD broken ? It is brand new, straight from the shop, I have not drop it and it does not makes any fuuny noise. Please help.

WHile I am at it. The reason that I bought the external HDD is that, I like to transfer some video file to it, but when I click on my computer to open my F drive, for some reason the window explorer programme would freeze. This happens each and everytime. How can I transfer the file to my external HDD then.

Please help.

best regards

PC Tong

boby55

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#197177 21-Feb-2009 21:31

No it is not broken,

The harddrive will be 640gb Unformated space, Harddrives loose space when formated

freitasm

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#197178 21-Feb-2009 21:41

Also while we treat a KB = 1024 bytes, 1MB = 1024 KB, 1GB = 1024MB the manufacturers use 1000 instead - very old and long story. But it's a difference when numbers start getting big like these days.

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fastmikey

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#197193 21-Feb-2009 23:13

For the long-winded version of Freitasm's accurate explanation of this, see here.

rscole86

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#197194 21-Feb-2009 23:18

You external will be fine. And as everyone has said, when you take the quoted size multiple it by 0.93 and you will get the amount of usable storage.

As for your F drive. I would run a disk check on the drive, see if it is faulty. Sounds like it may be on its way out, and depending on how vital your data is, it may pay to pay someone to recover your data for you.