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Simon Waters wrote: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte > > Disk drives are 10^6 bytes > Memory it is 2^20 bytes > > Guess that is the kind of simple(?) answer that only humans could create. > > My comment came as the result of a letter in Computer Shopper 149 (November) where a reader was confused by his HD having much less space left than he thought it should. The reply given in the magazine did refer to HD manufacturers using the denary (1000) Mb definition while the computer uses the binary definition. In this case he had a 200Gb HD which had 34Gb used. Even accounting for 200Gb being the unformatted size, the 77Gb Windows reported as free space sounds well off. The letter mentioned that with the denary/binary discrepancy you lose 3Gb for every 40Gb. I haven't done the maths to check that, but for a 200Gb drive that would mean you lose 15Gb before you even format the drive. Mind you the penny just dropped that he *may* also have a hidden recovery partition. Even so, it's still a dodgy practise. Kind regards, Julian -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html