My hard drive is XXGB. Why is only XXGB reported?

Drive makers "define" their gigabyte as a billion of bytes, 10^9 or
1,000,000,000. Megabytes are 10^6 or 1,000,000 bytes here.

Real binary gigabytes are 2^30 bytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes. Megabytes
are 2^20 or 1,048,576 bytes.

To make things worse, software can display either version. FDISK displays
binary megabytes 2^20, so does the HPT's BIOS. Your system BIOS seems to
sell 10^6 bytes for a HDD megabyte.

Doing the math, you'll see that's where your MB have "vanished", exactly
the difference between decimal and "real" binary megabytes, rounding
errors aside.

Windows 98's Drive Properties window displays capacity in bytes, plus
decimal and binary megabytes, so have a look there to have it all side by
side.


NOTE: Make sure that the drive has only one jumper on the drive.
A second jumper may be limiting the hard drive space that the BIOS can see.

***If the drive is a MAXTOR, remove the J46 jumper from the drive.

If you have a drive greater than 64 gigabyte and you are using windoes 95/98/ME please see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3ben-us%3b263044