I have just installed a lovely new Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120Gb Hard Drive (after lots of work, it literally only just fits after lots of rearranging)

It would only let me format it as NFTS, is this because of the size of the drive? (I am running XP and my main drive is 20Gb Fat32). Also is reporting 70Mb of used space on it, despite being blank, and no files showing up (yes I do have show hidden files checked) is this just the FAT etc?

there is sumin like that.

If u bought a 10gb Hd, it will only ever show as 9.8 or 9.2 for example...

cant remember why, dont worrt about it tho m8.

i thought you meant pc as in politically correct when i read the subject!!!!

The NTFS format works much better, faster and more securely under XP than FAT32 does.

I think that you can only format a HDD as NTFS if its above 30GB's in size as FAT32 cannot support higher sized disks without partitioning the HDD.

The used part of the newly formatted HDD is the boot sector (usually from sector 0 to 16 in length), basically full of junk (its a kind of guide on how to use the drive, for the computer).

I think this is accurate, but I'm sure if someone knows better they'll correct me.

I think there is a size limit to FAT32 partitions. The used space is reserved system space Its normally about 70mb~

Besides, NTFS > FAT32 :D

shd be able to format most sizes now to fat32 or ntfs, there were some limitations b4, but most systems can take anything up to 120GB, and over.

switched is almost right about the 70mb, it's actually a reserved sector by microsoft to keep track of hidden partitions which your system files manage on a byte by byte basis.