Samsung External Hard Drive

Simon · Nov 29, 2013, 17:03:06

I've just bought a Samsung 1Tb external drive for backup purposes, but Windows is reporting that it only has 931.50Gb of free space. Is this normal for a brand new drive? Where is the nearly 70Gb which seems to be missing?

Glenn · Nov 29, 2013, 17:09:36

1Tb is the unformatted size, most companies also use 1000mb as a 1Tb rather than 1024Mb as it should be.

Simon · Nov 29, 2013, 17:23:05

So, are you saying I should format it before using it?

Steve · Nov 29, 2013, 17:33:48

The creation of a file structure occupies space ie the blank unformatted HDD is 1TB , the size of 935 Gb looks to be the usual and normal available capacity from a Google.

Simon · Nov 29, 2013, 17:39:13

OK, thanks.

zappaDPJ · Nov 29, 2013, 18:46:30

All four of my 1TB drives report exactly the same. Looking on the bright side it means you haven't lost anything to duff sectors

Simon · Nov 29, 2013, 19:03:24

No, but 70Gb is quite a lot to 'lose'. I'm surprised they can get away with it under trading standards. If you bought a car with an advertised 2.0L engine, and it only turned out to have 1600cc, you'd soon complain!

zappaDPJ · Nov 29, 2013, 19:59:11

Well you do actually have 1TB if you count it in decimal. It's true that some of it is sometimes lost to bad sectors and some of it is lost to the filling system but the majority of what appears to be lost isn't lost at all. It's just counted by the filing system in powers of 2 and not 10. The filing system sees a kilobyte as 1024 bits and not 1000.

Steve · Nov 29, 2013, 21:06:02

Bedtime reading http://www.howtogeek.com/123268/

So the maths is 1,000,000,000,000 / (1024x1024x1024) = Gb

According to that though you've got a little bit extra!

Steve · Nov 29, 2013, 21:52:55

Quote from: Simon on Nov 29, 2013, 19:03:24
No, but 70Gb is quite a lot to 'lose'. I'm surprised they can get away with it under trading standards. If you bought a car with an advertised 2.0L engine, and it only turned out to have 1600cc, you'd soon complain!

The Honda Jazz 1.4 is nearer 1.3, 1339 I believe, the AMG Merc 63 used to be 6.3L it's now either 5.5 or 6.2 but who cares at that size when you've got 450bhp and beyond.

Gary · Nov 30, 2013, 06:50:24

My Lacie external drive reads more than 931Gb when formatted it reads 999.86 GB. Unless Macs reads drives differently. I would also format it Simon, alot of the time they come with software you don't need.

Steve · Nov 30, 2013, 07:11:22

Macs do read the drive differently I read the explanation last night but can't find it at present.

Simon · Nov 30, 2013, 10:40:15

I did format it, and it still said the same.

Steve · Nov 30, 2013, 10:50:49

It will be the same as the HDD is fine. Windows has always used powers of 1024 to define a HDD capacity and the manufacturers work in 1000 so it will always appear as less , if you connect the drive to OS X it will show as 1TB or near as damn it as Apple use the manufacturers definition for HDD size.

Simon · Nov 30, 2013, 11:17:20

It's purely for backups so should be OK. I may actually get another one, just for additional storage.

Technical Ben · Nov 30, 2013, 12:00:35

Quote from: Simon on Nov 29, 2013, 19:03:24
No, but 70Gb is quite a lot to 'lose'. I'm surprised they can get away with it under trading standards. If you bought a car with an advertised 2.0L engine, and it only turned out to have 1600cc, you'd soon complain!

There is 1TB worth of space on the "pages" of the drive. Some of that space is on the edges of the page you cannot write on, or in this case the sector markers. Some of that space is "contents" and page numbers/headers/footers. But you get a whole 1TB worth of drive, just it's less "usable" space. As long as they are consistent, it's ok. But I too prefer them to advertise usable space, as it gets very important on SSDs which can vary due to wear and other factors. :/

PS, it's not Windows that uses powers of 2, but computing. As it's binary, it should be powers of two. But competitors/companies/horrid advertisers realized they could claw back some sales/stats etc if they used thousands instead of 1024s. That's before we get to capitalization and bits and bytes and the muddle between them by most of us non-pros.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

PPS, found it. The "thought police" are telling us X is Y, up is down, good is bad, unlimited is limited, and now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541-2002
1028 IS 1000...

So not wanting to mislead consumers, the honest companies now have to use 1Ti (tebi). But of cause, would you buy a 1TB drive or a 1Ti drive?

Simon · Dec 01, 2013, 12:11:32

Thanks for the info, guys.

I now have another question - this drive is for backup purposes, partly but not specifically to safeguard against the likes of CryptoLocker and other such damaging malware. I'm well protected so not living in fear of anything, but if by chance something like that did get through, could it also infect a connected backup drive, thus rendering the backup useless?

So, I guess the question is, is a backup drive safe to be left connected (preferable) or should it only be connected when being used?

Steve · Dec 01, 2013, 12:34:49

I can't recall what you can and cannot do with Windows plus it's probably motherboard dependent, in OS X I have on one machine a 'good' bootable clone which is kept unconnected and then a regular backup HDD permanently attached.

Gary · Dec 01, 2013, 12:55:41

since windows I think can be made to make auto backups just leave it connected, and make sure your av is set to scan it. If you connect it via USB 2 it will be slower, if its an older PC use eSATA/ firewire 800 (if they still make firewire 800 drives) Also worth cehcking the drive has the latest firmware, Lacie for instance do a program that checks and updates the drives firmware.

Simon · Dec 01, 2013, 13:32:29

Yes, Windows 7 can do auto backups, that's why if prefer to keep it connected. I was just wondering if a virus, should it penetrate the AV, could automatically spread to all connected drives. So, in the case of something like CryptoLocker, could it 'lock' all files on all connected drives? This is all hypothetical, I hasten to add. It just crossed my mind when backing up this morning.

zappaDPJ · Dec 01, 2013, 14:16:03

Windows 7 backup will definitely backup a virus and it may well then produce an error the next time it attempts a backup. It's a bit of a double fail. It won't backup because there's a virus present in the archive which it put there in the first place? It has happened to me two or three times and the error is fairly well documented.

Gary · Dec 01, 2013, 14:17:52

Get another drive and have a clone of a clean image just in case

Steve · Dec 01, 2013, 14:36:41

Quote from: Gary on Dec 01, 2013, 14:17:52
Get another drive and have a clone of a clean image just in case

That's my feeling although I just don't if you can boot windows from a cloned USB drive like you can a Mac.

Simon · Dec 01, 2013, 14:50:04

Well, you could go on forever getting more and more drives to have a clone of a clone of a clone... etc, but still what's stopping a virus transferring to the second or third clone? Presumably you would only find out once it's happened, which I assume is what happened to Zap.

Simon · Dec 01, 2013, 14:55:54

I misread Gary's comment about a clone of a clean drive. Yes, I suppose that would work, and leave it disconnected other than when renewing it. That's kind of what I had in mind by having one drive just for backups, but obviously, I'd want to keep it updated.