TSGL: Slave drive not seen--solution

[Ron Brunton]

The problem is really the choice of arithmetic. Strictly speaking, the
prefixes (kilo, mega, giga, etc) refer to power of ten. Kilo = 1 x 10^3,
Mega = 1x10^6. However, computer conventions noted that 2^10 = 1024. Since
storage is binary (bits) the amount of storage was referenced by powers of
2. 1024 was "close enough" to 1000 that the computer world referred to 1024
bytes as a "kilo"byte. From here the confusion multiplies (excuse the pun).
On version of calculating a gigabyte is decimal 1000x1000x1000 bytes. The
other is based on 2 - 1024x1024x1024 (=1,073,741,824). 

Manufactures frequently use the decimal approach to indicating size because
it "sounds" bigger and is still technically correct. A 160 GB (decimal) hard
drive only has 149 GB (power of 2) bytes available. Now take out the
overhead stuff and you have the 145 GB. Nobody's actually "Lying", but it's
not really all that up front either.

Hope this helps. Fortunately storage is relatively cheap and 145 GB is still
a lot of space.

Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: list-bounces at tsgserver.com [mailto:list-bounces at tsgserver.com] On
Behalf Of Don Penlington
Sent: January-11-08 1:57 AM
To: Tech Support Guy Mailing List
Subject: TSGL: Slave drive not seen--solution

The problem is solved.

This dummy was seeing the slave drive all the time.

What I was seeing in My Computer was C-Drive at 12 Gb and D-Drive at 145 
Gb. This is what I thought I'd partitioned the new 160 Gb into--allowing 
for a missing 3 Gb which you never see on the Hard Drive for the low-level 
stuff .

I therefore assumed that these were the 2 new partitions on the new 160Gb 
drive.  Wrong.

What I was actually seeing was the old (slave) drive (12Gb) plus the ENTIRE 
new drive (145Gb). The coincidence of the new-size partition being the same 
size as the old drive fooled me, coupled with the fact that there is 15Gb 
missing on the new drive. As I'd installed XP on the C-Drive, in fact it 
had installed on the slave drive (I didn't think this was allowed?) so the 
original data got wiped in the process. Luckily it was of no great
importance.

The new drive is a Seagate Barracuda.

It's not a restore disk, or anything of that sort--just a new unformatted 
hard drive.

When I started all over again after physically removing the old drive, 
there was definitely only 145Gb of allowable space to partition. No 
proprietary junk that's visible.

Sheesh. 15Gb you don't get out of a nominal 160Gb. That's about 5 times the 
size of XP.  I know there's all the SMART stuff etc, but surely that's not 
that big. What on earth is taking up that much space?  Are we being 
conned?  Is this normal? Or am I missing something?

Don Penlington

 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html


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