External HDD reporting wrong capacity

I recently purchased a 1tb Toshiba stor.e art 3 external HDD and tried to format it for use on mac os x 10.6.6

Since doing this, the hdd is reporting about 2/3 of the capacity used when in fact it isnt. Do you know why this is the case? Why cant I used the whole 1tb capacity when formatted for mac os x?

Thanks

Reply 1 : External HDD reporting wrong capacity

the manufacture uses 10 to the power of 9 to indicate a Gigabyte while the OS uses a binary method of measurement, 1024 to the power of 3 to indicate the size of the same drive.

Bob P has a better explanation but basically that is why you never see a drive reported by the OS as being the same as that on the side of the box it came in

P

Reply 2 : External HDD reporting wrong capacity

The size is measured correctly at about 996 mb. The issue is that it reports about 665 mb used straight after formatting.

Reply 3 : External HDD reporting wrong capacity

that directly after you initialized this drive, it reported 996mb (sure it's not GB?)

Then after you put something on it, it drops to 665 mb (GB?)

P

Reply 4 : External HDD reporting wrong capacity

Yes,I meant gb, not mb. The hdd still reports about 996gb after formatting for mac (which is correct), but it also reports about 665 gb used, when there is nothing on the hdd. When I put something on it (say a 4gb file) it reports that 669gb are used.

Reply 5 : External HDD reporting wrong capacity

it reports 996 and it reports 665. What exactly is "it" and where does "it" report that?

Kees

Reply 6 : External HDD reporting wrong capacity

The system, the 'get info' tab on the external hdd