HDD Limitations?

[PrOgOoFa]

Hey, just installed a new array of 8x2tb = 16tb in raid 0.

I have had an old array of 8x1.5tb = 12tb in raid 0 also, I am running win7 x64. When the arrays are up and running in the My Computer window the array is show and the size of the disk is show. The size of the disk is 10.9tb, My question is would the drive not recognise more than 10.9t or will it continue to work although the size of disk is "met", therefore asking me to clean the disk of unwanted items etc. If i right click the drive and go Properties it tells me the drive has 12,000,000,000,000 bytes as seen below in the attachment.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks

 

[yodap]

Welcome to the forum.

Everything seems normal to me therefore I don't understand your question.

12001612918784Bytes / 1024 = 11720325116KB / 1024 =11434463.528MB / 1024 = 11166.47GB / 1024 = 10.904TB

 

[PrOgOoFa]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

However, i have 8x 1.5tb drives toataling 12tb. However Windows only see's the 10.9.

The question is will the drive stop filling up after the 10.9 is reached?

I have 10.2tb used space at the moment. Being 12tb in total i should have 1.8tb left to fill. Will this 1.8 be unusable or will it continue to fill after the 10.9 has been reached?

 

[yodap]

The question is will the drive stop filling up after the 10.9 is reached?

Yes it will.

If you had checked the properties of any or all of the 1.5 TB drives individually, you would have seen that they spec out at 1390GB out of the box. Not 1500GB. This true of all 1.5 TB drives everywhere, not just yours. Call it false advertising if you like but it is what it is.

 

[Digerati]

There are several reasons for the discrepancies. To start, disk makers and operating systems do not measure a "kilo" in the same way. Drive makers' marketing people want you to think you are getting the most space, so they use kilo like mathematicians do and say 100 x 10 = 1000 or 1 Kilo. But OS makers use kilos based on the binary system - since a transistor only has two states, on and off, or 1 and 0. So for software makers, it is 2^10 = 1024 = 1Kilo.

The problem is, if you simply count the number of physical storage locations (bits) on a disk's platters, then 1 Kilo does = 1000. But if you count the bytes used by the file (as seen by the OS) stored on the disk, then 1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes. Clear as mud, right? But it does explain yodap's example.

I don't think it is "false" advertising, and since it has been this way since the beginning of magnetic disk storage (including floppy), I don't think there was any intentional deception when drives first came out. But I do think today's drive marketers take advantage of that confusion.

Also, whenever a disk is partitioned and formatted, space is used in the process, and the mapping of the partition and disk is stored in the master tables. Thus a freshly formatted disk with nothing stored on it will show the available capacity something short of the "raw" disk capacity.

 

[Nibiru2012]

Thanks Digs! Excellent explanation of how HDD are advertised one way and recognized by the OS the other way.

I have known this since I had my first computer years ago, but a lot of users don't care to understand and/or ignore these subtle differences. Then they whine, complain, fall on the floor and turn blue, etc.

 

[Digerati]

Then they whine, complain, fall on the floor and turn blue, etc

After 5 kids, 7 grandkids, I'm adept at totally ignoring that - unless we're in public, then a quick smack on the backside provides something real to cry about, and the instant realization that, "Homey don't play dat!"

 

[Nibiru2012]

I'm glad to see someone else believes as I do when it comes to the correct method of behavior modification. A friend of mine when I lived in Tulsa, OK called it the: "Jesus Come To Preach Meeting". :lol:

 

[yodap]

I don't think it is "false" advertising, and since it has been this way since the beginning of magnetic disk storage (including floppy)

For the record, I don't think it is either.

I (surprisingly) came to understand this years ago as well. Thanks for the excellent explanation.

 

[clifford_cooley]

They did at some point in time make a change and start labeling the binary abbreviation with a prefix "i"

1Kb = 1000 bytes
1Kib = 1024 bytes

1Mb = 1000000 bytes
1Mib = 1048576 bytes

I'm not sure how much they are enforcing the rules that were created though. If at anytime you do see the prefix "i", it does represent the binary equivalence of the abbreviation that follows.

Edit:
Kilobyte

In December 1998, an international standards organization attempted to address these dual definitions of the conventional prefixes by proposing unique binary prefixes and prefix symbols to denote multiples of 1024, such as “kibibyte (KiB)”, which exclusively denotes 210 or 1024 bytes.[7] Had this proposal been widely and consistently adopted, it would have liberated the standard unit prefixes to unambiguously refer only to their strict decimal definitions wherein kilobyte would be understood to represent only 1000 bytes. However, in the over‑12 years that have since elapsed, the proposal has seen little adoption by the computer industry.

 

[Digerati]

They did at some point in time make a change and start labeling the binary abbreviation with a prefix "i"

1Kb = 1000 bytes
1Kib = 1024 bytes

Scott Tissue tried to get everyone to stop calling a kleenix a Kleenix too. That didnt work either.

 

[Nibiru2012]

I think what you mean is kibibyte Cliff.

But then I always thought Kibbi was a Middle Eastern meat dish with ground beef and bulgur wheat, which I love by the way! LOL! (Actually it's Kibbeh)

 

[clifford_cooley]

I think what you mean is kibibyte Cliff.

I don't see where I needed that specific term.

 

[TrainableMan]

I want a Kiwibyte ... that would be a nibble on my ear from a beautiful lady New Zealander

Yes I think it's deceptive on purpose and it always has been, they want you to think you are getting more than you do. As HDs get bigger and bigger the difference is becoming quite clear, calling it 1TB when Windows shows it more like 930GB is just too far off IMHO.