[conspire] why is there such a large size discrepancy reported by fdisk and df

[Darlene Wallach]

I redid mkfs.ext3 without specifying a size.

# mkfs.ext3 -c -c /dev/sdb2

I don't understand why there is such a large discrepancy
between fdisk and df.
fdisk shows /dev/sdb is 163.9G
df shows 148G and 140G for size and available respectively.
What am I misunderstanding?

I thought I saw something regarding the difference in
size reported by two different commands on a technical
list to which I'm subscribed, though it wasn't such a
big difference of 15.9G. Unfortunately, I don't remember
which list and I haven't found it on the conspire list.

# fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1         244     1959898+  82  Linux swap
/dev/sdb2             245       19819   157236187+  83  Linux

# df -h /dev/sdb2
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb2             148G  189M  140G   1% /media/ieee1394disk

Should I assume the external disk is good, i.e.; I can
trust the data I move there will be safe and available?

Darlene