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Hard Drive Specs?

bubbalicious
Grafter
Posts: 174
Registered: ‎26-09-2007

Hard Drive Specs?

Ive had a new hard drive replaced in my Sony Vaio FZ31M laptop and I asked for my original/faulty hard drive to be returned.  I am a little confused, my laptop specs state it is a 200GB hard drive and the label on the old hard drive states 'one gigabyte (GB) one billion bytes'. To my 'non technical brain' it seems this does not match my laptop specs.
Could someone please explain if I am wrong and if somehow the label's 1GB means 2GB.
Processor is 'Intel core 2 dup processor T7250' running Vista
7 REPLIES 7
pierre_pierre
Grafter
Posts: 19,757
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Hard Drive Specs?

Whatever that doessnt make sense, your machine should have 2 gb ram and a 200 gb Hdd.  Just looked at one of mine it has the drive size on it in clear (only 20 gb)
bubbalicious
Grafter
Posts: 174
Registered: ‎26-09-2007

Re: Hard Drive Specs?

Oh Help!!
The engineers report states what they replaced and sent back to me was the 'Hard Drive' - however a call to Sony tells me they think it is actually a Memory drive/chip - hence the 1GB as I have 2 of them?? I think it is a little large but.......?
I have pasted photos below of what was sent to me, could someone kindly please confirm what It is I have?? size is 6.5cm x 10cm
Thanks to all
shutter
Community Veteran
Posts: 22,206
Thanks: 3,769
Fixes: 65
Registered: ‎06-11-2007

Re: Hard Drive Specs?

Looks like a hard drive to me !
RAM looks like this ........http://www.hardwarezone.com/img/data/articles/2004/1155/ddr2-samples.jpg
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Hard Drive Specs?

Hi bubbalicious,
It is a hard drive. The text you are looking at is basically the manufacturer saying that they are rounding down the number of bytes in one gigabyte for their measuring purposes - the actual value as your computer reports it should be 1,073,741,824 bytes to one gigabyte.
This is why hard drives always appear smaller than they say they are after plugging them into your computer.
ReedRichards
Seasoned Pro
Posts: 4,927
Thanks: 145
Fixes: 25
Registered: ‎14-07-2009

Re: Hard Drive Specs?

What the label is actually saying is that the manufacturers are kidding you that your drive is bigger than it really is!  Windows computers use 1024 bytes to the kilobyte and 1024 kilobytes to the megabyte and 1024 megabytes to the gigabyte.  Your drive manufacturer is saying that they use 1000x1000x1000 bytes to their gigabyte so they can say its capacity is a bigger number than if they had used 1024x1024x1024.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte .    
bubbalicious
Grafter
Posts: 174
Registered: ‎26-09-2007

Re: Hard Drive Specs?

Wonderful, thanks guys for clearing this up for me and pointing me to where I can gain a little understanding of these things is very interesting.
As always your kindness & patience sharing your knowledge with us mere mortals is very much appreciated. 
Cheesy Best wishes to all,Bubbalicious Cheesy
pierre_pierre
Grafter
Posts: 19,757
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Hard Drive Specs?

and dont leave it fo another year Sally, we sometimes have fun on the chit chat section