Brand new 1TB hard drive gets 931 GB?

[sarfraz]

I know drives take up space to run and stuff but 70 gigs?! That's crazy! Is this normal? I just bought a WD 1TB Caviar Black
__________________
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 B50@ 3.65ghz
GPU: Radeon HD 5770 Vapor-X
HD: WD 1TB Caviar Black
PS: Ultra 650 watt
RAM: 6gb DDR2 800
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Monitor:23" Gateway FHX2300 1080p

 

[foothead]

Yeah it's normal. My 1.5 TB drive only gives my 1336 GB usable. If only it was 1GB more...

 

[Cabbs]

Hard drive manufacturers and Windows measure space differently. You aren't losing any space.

 

[foothead]

You sort of are losing space, since the hard drive manufacturers use 1000 instead of 1024, which is technically not correct.

 

[Cabbs]

I don't think it works that way. It's just a difference in measurement, not an actual loss in storage space.

For example, you can measure an engine's torque output in ft. lbs., and nm. The numbers are different, but the amount of torque in reality is still the same.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

You're not losing any space at all. You are utilizing the full capacity of the drive.

The drive manufacturer is counting what constitutes a TB in a different way than Windows does, using a factor of 1000 instead of 1024.

1,000,000,000,000 bytes
/ 1024 = 976,562,500 kB
/ 1024 = 953,674 MB
/ 1024 = 931 GB

A "proper" TB = 1000 GB would be 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.

This is standard practice for storage manufacturers.

 

[foothead]

Not exactly what I meant. The hard drive companies cheat on their measurements basically. What they call '1GB' is not truly 1GB.

The OS might have also created a hidden backup and/or swap partition on the drive, which would make it appear even smaller.

 

[BK_123]

Yeah I have noticed that as well when checking how much space I have left and they my USB was 2GB but only 1.96GB was avaliable to use which I am very annoyed about but they cant cheat. if you find it on the web and buy it and it said 1TB and you couldnt use all the space you would really be annoyed then...

 

[Celegorm]

Not exactly what I meant. The hard drive companies cheat on their measurements basically. What they call '1GB' is not truly 1GB.

It's not cheating it's measurement differences in different areas of production. Everything computers do is in base 2. So so one gigabyte is 2^30. However any manufacturing company that wants to be global are pretty much required by common courtesy to use SI units. Both are right, it's just a matter of who has done the calculations.

 

[BK_123]

But the thing is when you look at the box you are thinking is it that much and is it worth it? But that doesnt matter to everyone they just go and buy it because it what they wanted....