🚀 go-pugleaf

> Was patitioning 160gb maxtor disk through maxtor utility. NTFS
> formating was getting allowed only when dial reached 34gb mark.
>
> Then same size disk was partitioned with size of primary set at 20gb
> while installing OS.
>
> But in the second instance lost something like 10gb disk space.
>
> So wonder if for NTFS format of primary partition a certain percetage
> of total size must be alloted in order not to lose any space on the
> disk.

I don't exactly follow what you are saying here. An NTFS partition can be 
any size (max = 2^64 = about 18.5 Million TeraBytes). Perhaps the maxtor 
utility has a false minimum limit. What does it suggest to use for 33GB as 
Fat32 is (falsly by windows) limited to 32GB, so if NTFS isn't allowed until 
you reach 34GB, then 33GB is in "no man's land"!

The reason you are 'losing' over 10GB is this:

There is a problem with the term GB - it can be interpreted in 2 ways by 
people with different backgrounds/outlooks. Some follow the mathematical 
definition that Giga means 10^9 (1,000,000,000) and others follow the other 
meaning (not sure what the dicipline is called) of Giga which is 2^30 
(1073741824). This second term is sometimes refered to as Gibi (GIga in 
BInary).

The marketing people at maxtor (and other drives), use the mathematical 
definition to describe their drive capacities. So your 160GB drive holds 
160,000,000,000 Bytes (mathematically accurate). Windows reports drive sizes 
using the other definition, so to windows your drive holds 160 / 2^30 = 
149GB.

Strange but true - the only industry or dicipline in the world where 160GB = 
149GB! But this is probably where you are 'losing' over 10GB of space. The 
answer is that you aren't losing the space, its just windows reporting the 
size wrongly.