extra space when i partition my hard drive?

i just got a new 160 gig hd and when i partition it with both cfdisk and the partitioning tool on my windows cd, it always has about 8 mb of free space left over. i format the entire 160 gigs into one partition and when i look at it in the partition table it shows an extra 8 mb of free space that should be part of the main partition. i had heard that windows has a problem with large drives unless you have sp1, but my install cd has sp1 on it and the drive shows up in windows as 160,000,000,000 bytes when i look at it's properties. does anybody know why the partitioning tools wont format the whole drive?

If I'm correct, it's got something to do with Windows only being able to format in multiples of 8MB. And then there's the difference between 1,000 kb in a Megabite, and 1,024 kb in a Megabite - one is the "human" variant, the other is the "computer" variant. I'm sure someone smarter will answer this one, though :D

eehmm it's MegaByte or Megabit. And the difference is because harddisk manufacturers use the SI standards (they have to). The SI standard defines K(ilo) as 1000 and M(ega) as 1000000 (multiples of 10). Your computer uses the binary standard wich defines K to be 1024 and M as 1048576 (multiples of 2).

In binary (computer) terms:

1,024 Byte = 1 Kilobyte
1,024 Kilobyte = 1 Megabyte
1,024 Megabyte = 1 Gigabyte

So if you have 171,798,691,840 bytes you would have exactly 160 GB but you say that the disk properties show as 160.000.000.000 which would equal 149.0116119 Gigabyte (GB).

See the problem with Hard Drive manufactures "rounding down to 1000".

Which is it, if you have 160.000.000.000 as they say you only have a 149 GB Hard drive but the manufacturer is also saying you have 160GB

They seem to want the best of both worlds, they round down the bytes but then just aquire 11 Gigabytes from somewhere when it suits their advertising/selling needs.

As to the extra 8 mb that you are getting left with, if you do the maths you will proberbly find that there is a missing 8 mb somwhere. I am not very good with maths at all so I wont even attempt it! If you did there is still the problem of what was rounded down to 1000 and what stayed at 1024!

Confused?
I am!

actually the windows properties show the capacity as 160,031,014,912 bytes, but it rounds that to 149 GB.(i rounded it off to 160,000,000,000 last time ;)). i dont know if that includes the missing 8 mb that didnt get put on the partition. when i look at it with cfdisk(i delete all the partitions without writing it) the free space is shown as 160039.28 mb, but i dunno if its using 1000 or 1024 for that estimate. what i really need to know is if this leftover space matters at all and if there's anything i can do about it.

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what i really need to know is if this leftover space matters at all and if there's anything i can do about it.

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Short and sweet - no.

8MB on a 160GB is nothing considering what was used in formatting the drive. It's like worrying if there's actually 2 full scoops of raisins in your Raisin Bran. :D

nice analogy ;)