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Drive makers "define" their gigabyte as a billion of bytes, 10^9 or 1,000,000,000. Megabytes are 10^6 or 1,000,000 bytes here.

Real binary gigabytes are 2^30 bytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes. Megabytes are 2^20 or 1,048,576 bytes.

To make things worse, software can display either version. DOS based FDISK displays binary megabytes 2^20, so does the HPT's BIOS. Your system BIOS seems to sell 10^6 bytes for a HDD megabyte.

Doing the math, you'll see that's where your MB have "vanished", exactly the difference between decimal and "real" binary megabytes, rounding errors aside.

Windows 98's Drive Properties window displays capacity in bytes, plus decimal and binary megabytes, so have a look there to have it all side by side.

Go back to our BIOS FAQ.

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