7. Tech Tips
page 43
LaCie Biggest S1S
User’s Manual
7.2. Available Storage Capacity
A gigabyte (GB) means 1,000,000,000 bytes. In order to utilize a hard disk drive, it has to be formatted first. Formatting a
disk consists of the following: the operating system erases all of the bookkeeping information on the disk, tests the disk to
make sure that all of the sectors are reliable, marks bad sectors (i.e., those that are scratched) and creates internal address
tables that it later uses to locate information. Once formatted, the actual available storage capacity varies, depending on
operating environment, and is generally about 5 to 10% less than the non-formatted capacity.
Tech Note:
Another important factor in file transfer speeds is how the drive has been formatted. For more
information in choosing the correct file system format, please see section
7.1. File System Formats
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