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External Hard Disk Problem...

J

JohnathanSmith

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi,

just received my new Lacie Porsche 160GB external hard disk and once I connected it I saw that only 149GB are available. I would like to know if this is normal... 😕

Does it have a problem and I need to send it back? Any help will be truly appreciated.

Regards
Jonathan
 
hard drive manufacturers calculate with 10-base and operating systems calculate with 2-base numbers; therefore, lacie states that 160GB = 160*1000*1000*1000 Bytes, but operating system sees 160000000000/2^10/2^10/2^10 = 149GB

so, it is normal.
 
thanks for the info guys, really appreciated.

One more thing that confused me is that the hard disk didn't need a format, neither the software that came with it in order to work. I know, that's even better, but I've been told that all new hard disks need a format in order to work. Any ideas how did this happen?

Regards
J.
______________________________________________
Blue and white G3, 450 mhz, 512 mb ram, Mac Os 9.1
 
It sounds to me like that hard drive had been used before. All of the external drives I have were never formatted when purchased.
 
tomf87 said:
It sounds to me like that hard drive had been used before. All of the external drives I have were never formatted when purchased.
Click to expand...

lacie drives are pre-formatted
 
actually, the drive was never used. Bought it new/sealed from a local computer store.

so, jfreak do you think that's normal. I didn't even have to instal the software that came with it it in order for it to work...

thanks in advance.
 
JohnathanSmith said:
actually, the drive was never used. Bought it new/sealed from a local computer store.

so, jfreak do you think that's normal. I didn't even have to instal the software that came with it it in order for it to work...

thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

that lacie software is for backups, i think, and i have never installed that even though i have two lacie D2 hard drives and several of my friends have one too.
 
JFreak said:
lacie drives are pre-formatted
Click to expand...

Oh... I didn't know that. I have two of those LaCie 1TB drives, and I can't recall if they were pre-formatted or not. I guess my mind is going.
 
JohnathanSmith said:
thanks for letting us know about your possessions Tom.
cheers mate, really useful information.

regards
J.
Click to expand...

They aren't mine. My employer owns them, and I don't have direct access to them, so it isn't all that great. The point of my post was that after going through two LaCie drives, I couldn't recall whether they were pre-formatted.
 
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