USB harddrive formatting question

[tag]

I had this old USB thumb drive laying around and decided to see what was on it. When I plugged it in, I found nothing to be on it, but out of the 125MB that it could hold, only near 110 were free. So I formatted the drive through my Macs Disk Utility And now I have all 125MB to use.

Im wondering though, when I formatted the drive originally in Windows, it always just kept it at 110 or so MB out of the whole free. Did I delete some core component when I formatted it through the Mac? Im curious as I'm planning on getting a 200GB Seagate USB external harddrive and I have read reviews saying that only like 185 GBs is actually available on the drive. So if I format it like I did with my thumb drive and gain access to all 200GB, will that cause any problems?

 

[ITASOR]

I don't think it's possible to delete some major component. You may have deleted like Password protection software on the drive or something like that. I don't think you can delete something and not make it work. That may just be how the windows format is, since windows sucks at everything else.

 

[ClarkeB]

Well, there is probably 200 gigabytes available on the drive, with 1 GB = 1000MB. The thing is, 1 GB actually equals 1024 MB, thus there are 185 ACTUAL GBs (it is one of the biggest forms of false advertisment you will see anywhere these days).


To review:

Greedy Marketing Execs: 1 GB = 1000MB
Actuality: 1 GB = 1024 MB


[I did the math, and it would seem there would be 195 actual GBs, not 185.]