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Claritin · 10-05-03, 12:00 AM

I have been a Professional PC tech for umm... 9 years I think now. I have been building my own systems since I was like 12 (for 17 years)

1000k per meg vs 1024k per meg is the reason for the bulk of the size descrepency.

Yes we all know it's 1024... we are not the retards... the retards are the ones in marketing labeling the boxes.

I recently bought a 200 Gig Western Digital Drive with 8 meg cache (special edition) ATA-133 (I think... I forget since my MB in my server only supports ATA-100) and 7200 RPM.

My 200 gig drive is about 186 gig in the computing world. It's only 200 gig in the Marketing world.

No one can tell me it takes 14 GIG to keep the FAT table straight LOL.

Also all here are more hard drive facts :
1.) The phrase low level formatting doesn't exist in the modern PC world. People still say it but it's just stupid. Low level formatting was how you got your hard drive controller to "map" the actual hard drive. Modern hard drives have the "mapping" part of the controller ON THE DRIVE NOW. It's been this way for a long long time.
2.) Hard drives still map out bad sectors... but with the way the controllers are set up now when you get a bad sector teh controller locks that sector out and remaps it to a sector on a "hidden" section of the drive. so say sector 1268 is dead if your machine tries to write to it the controller will re-direct the data to sector 9678.
3.) All hard drives are shipped with bad sectors that are already redirected by statement #2.
4.) Looking at #3 you can see a "200 marketing GIG" is probably actually "201 Marketing gig" to account for these errors. We are lucky they are too stupid to realize this or we would be paying for "201 Marketing GIG drives" rather than 200.
5.) Putting a HD with alot of bad sectors as a secondary drive and loading your OS off the new drive gives you a higher rate of success on getting files off the drive. Running scan disk or defrag on a drive you KNOW is failing usually does more damage than good... the strain is usually more than the drive can bear.
6.) If your hard drive is completely dead and not under warrenty... try sticking it in the freezer wrapped in a paper towel for 5 mins then re-installing it ASAP powering it up and copying the most important data to another drive ASAP. Sometimes (2% likelyhood if I had to stick a number on it) this will work. While I am not sure of the real logic to it... in techie urban legends it has been said that it cools the controller chips if they are over heating.. and also that the HD platter shrinks a tiny amount... either could be legit... all I know is it works on rare occasion.

(most of the hard drive info was just put here to let you know I am not some reject who claims to be any profession that would back-up his post... I really am a tech (under paid one at that

).... I know HD info is completely irrelevant to the AXIM)

10-05-03, 12:00 AM	#15 (permalink)
Claritin Aximsite Rookie Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Cincinati, OH Posts: 48 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Yup I have been a Professional PC tech for umm... 9 years I think now. I have been building my own systems since I was like 12 (for 17 years) 1000k per meg vs 1024k per meg is the reason for the bulk of the size descrepency. Yes we all know it's 1024... we are not the retards... the retards are the ones in marketing labeling the boxes. I recently bought a 200 Gig Western Digital Drive with 8 meg cache (special edition) ATA-133 (I think... I forget since my MB in my server only supports ATA-100) and 7200 RPM. My 200 gig drive is about 186 gig in the computing world. It's only 200 gig in the Marketing world. No one can tell me it takes 14 GIG to keep the FAT table straight LOL. Also all here are more hard drive facts : 1.) The phrase low level formatting doesn't exist in the modern PC world. People still say it but it's just stupid. Low level formatting was how you got your hard drive controller to "map" the actual hard drive. Modern hard drives have the "mapping" part of the controller ON THE DRIVE NOW. It's been this way for a long long time. 2.) Hard drives still map out bad sectors... but with the way the controllers are set up now when you get a bad sector teh controller locks that sector out and remaps it to a sector on a "hidden" section of the drive. so say sector 1268 is dead if your machine tries to write to it the controller will re-direct the data to sector 9678. 3.) All hard drives are shipped with bad sectors that are already redirected by statement #2. 4.) Looking at #3 you can see a "200 marketing GIG" is probably actually "201 Marketing gig" to account for these errors. We are lucky they are too stupid to realize this or we would be paying for "201 Marketing GIG drives" rather than 200. 5.) Putting a HD with alot of bad sectors as a secondary drive and loading your OS off the new drive gives you a higher rate of success on getting files off the drive. Running scan disk or defrag on a drive you KNOW is failing usually does more damage than good... the strain is usually more than the drive can bear. 6.) If your hard drive is completely dead and not under warrenty... try sticking it in the freezer wrapped in a paper towel for 5 mins then re-installing it ASAP powering it up and copying the most important data to another drive ASAP. Sometimes (2% likelyhood if I had to stick a number on it) this will work. While I am not sure of the real logic to it... in techie urban legends it has been said that it cools the controller chips if they are over heating.. and also that the HD platter shrinks a tiny amount... either could be legit... all I know is it works on rare occasion. (most of the hard drive info was just put here to let you know I am not some reject who claims to be any profession that would back-up his post... I really am a tech (under paid one at that ).... I know HD info is completely irrelevant to the AXIM)