dissapearing space

tom.mullie · #1 (**permalink**) April 6, 2008, 03:46 PM

I recently completed my first build, using two seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB HDDs in RAID 0. I used the intel matrix system built into my motherboard (Asus P5K-E wifi/AP) to set them up in RAID 0. They show up as 1 drive, and they seem to respond fairly fast (which suggests to me that RAID is working.

The problem is that they only show up as a 935GB drive, and every time I boot up I have less space. Currently, it shows 832GB free, out of 935. I only have 39GB worth of stuff on here. So I seem to be missing 129GB, which is shrinking. Last night, it showed 836Gb. So I lost 4GB, even though I haven't done anything in the meantime.

My guess is that I F*cked up the RAID, for lack of a better explanation. Any ideas?

**SugarJ** · #2 (**permalink**) April 6, 2008, 04:46 PM

Check your system restore settings.

Prof. Dr. Silver · #3 (**permalink**) April 6, 2008, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SugarJ

Check your system restore settings.

If you use system restore settings....set it to approx 3% of your total space.

If you don't use it...switch it off....!

Maybe the wife is DL movies behind your back?

tom.mullie · #4 (**permalink**) April 8, 2008, 07:52 AM

it was the windows restore settings. why would anyone ever want 179GB of restore space (thats how much I had default)? restore back to every time they've ever booted, just for memories' sake?

I've set it to 10GB, which should be ample. Thanks guys.

ineedaname · #5 (**permalink**) April 8, 2008, 09:49 AM

Another thing 2 do is set ur Recycle bin size down too since you probably don't need 10% of ur drive 2 b a recycle bin. You can also set your paging file too while ur @ it.

thatguy · #6 (**permalink**) April 15, 2008, 08:19 PM

you lose a bit of space reformatting the HDD

Moneyless · #7 (**permalink**) April 15, 2008, 10:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thatguy

you lose a bit of space reformatting the HDD

Actually it's not really from reformatting the HDD. Sure you lose a little when writing the file system allocation tables (or RAID system files) and such, but not that much.

The main reason why HDD's always seem like they have less space then they should is because HDD manufacturers specify disk capacity using the SI prefixes mega-, giga- and tera-, while most OS tools report capacity using the same abbreviations but actually use binary prefixes.

Ex:
The prefix mega-, which normally means 10⁶ (1,000,000), in the context of data storage can mean 2²⁰ (1,048,576), which is nearly 5% more. This results in a difference between the HDD manufacturer's stated capacity and the apparent capacity of the drive when examined through most OS tools. The difference becomes even more noticeable (7%) for a gigabyte. For example, Windows reports HDD capacity both in decimal-based units to 12 or more significant digits and with binary-based units to three significant digits. Thus an HDD specified by an HDD manufacturer as a 30 GB disk might have its capacity reported by Windows both as "30,065,098,568 bytes" and "28.0 GB". The HDD manufacturer used the SI definition of "giga", 10⁹ to arrive at 30 GB; however, because the utilities provided by Windows, Mac and some Linux distros define a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes (2³⁰ bytes, often referred to as a gigabyte, or GiB), the OS reports capacity of the HDD as (only) 28.0 GB.