Erasing a drive and getting back "Full" capacity

Hello and thanks in advance. I Have a 1TB Lacie Quadra ex drive that had about 300G of windows files on it formatted Fat32. I want to use this drive to back up my Footage for a movie I am making that is on a OWC EX Drive hooked up to my G5 2.0. OK so I reformatted the Lacie as Mac OS Extended and used the Zero out data function to erase. It took about 5 hours but when it was finished I still did not have full capacity of the Lacie drive? It only showed 931.2 GB and i could see grayed out it said 12 folders and 39 files? So there is about 68 GB hidden on there somewhere? Should I use the 7 Pass secure erase and if so will that give me the Full capacity of 1TB back? When I have full capacity back my plan is to first copy the contents of my movie ( which is on the OWC Drive) to the Lacie and then hook up to time machine. So then the Lacie would be backing up the OWC ex drive( which is my media drive) correct? Thanks again!

You don't ever gat all the space on the drive. A percentage of it is used for the formatting itself. Also, there is some numerical hanky panky that means that the numbers don't do what you think they aught.

> Also, there is some numerical hanky panky that means that the numbers don't do what you
> think they aught.

That's because one megabyte isn't actually 1,000,000 bytes:

[en.wikipedia.org]

931.2GB for a "1TB" drive sounds a bit low, though. I think you usually get more like 960GB. There may be hidden drivers and other files on the drive. But I wouldn't push it -- you shouldn't be using over 900GB of a 1TB drive, anyway.

And next time, don't buy a Lacie, period. Backup whatever you store on there, and back it up diligently. Lacies have a charming habit of dying within a year of purchase.


www.derekmok.com

OK... What drive would you recommend? Also would you use the Zero out or 7 pass function to erase?

I never bother with "Zero Out" because it takes too long. If the computer crashes during that period, you could end up with a messed-up drive. A simple Erase tends to be enough.

Drive-brand recommendations have been discussed ad nauseam here. Do a forum search, or peruse the FAQ section.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks very much

Zero out or 7 pass stuff is only for security - to make sure that no one could hack that drive and extract data that had been "deleted." It has no bearing on how much free space is made available, and is a waste of time to use unless you're doing top secret stuff.

Scott

You don't need "Security" if you are immediately writing over a freshly formatted drive. You can't bring back erased data if it is written over. An quick & easy Erase in Disk Utility does the trick. Nevermind 7 pass / low level format / zero out / bla-bla-bla...

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.