Size -vs- Reality

Zendall

Hello,

My question is about portable drives in regard to the actual amount of space you get. I have 2 WD 120 & 1 640 portable drives. With both 120 gig drives I get 111 gig actual usage from it, this seemed OK to me since both were consistent & I expected less than the actual 120 gigs. I got the 640 gig drive today & it says, according to My Computer, that 599 gigs are available. Does this sound right to you? I expected a loss on the 640 gigs but 41 gigs seems excessive to me, it did to my computer friend as well.

Thank you for any timely replies to my question. I need to figure this out ASAP to avoid warranty problems, please.

~Zen

fatcat

Wondering why your new 500GB hard drive only shows 460GB of storage space available? Hard drive manufacturers calculate hard drive sizes using base 10, where 1000 bytes equals one kilobyte. But computers do everything in binary (base 2), where it takes 1024 bytes to store a kilobyte of data. In addition, the computer’s OS uses part of the drive for a directory to keep track of the actual data. As a result, the usable capacity of a hard drive is typically 90 to 93% of the advertised capacity.

Zendall

fatcat wrote:

http://www.whatsabyte.com/

Processor or Virtual Storage
· 1 Bit = Binary Digit
· 8 Bits = 1 Byte
· 1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
· 1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
· 1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
· 1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
· 1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
· 1024 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
· 1024 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
· 1024 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
· 1024 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
· 1024 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte

Disk Storage
· 1 Bit = Binary Digit
· 8 Bits = 1 Byte
· 1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
· 1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
· 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
· 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
· 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
· 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
· 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
· 1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
· 1000 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
· 1000 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte

Sorry, but how exactly does this help answer my question? I'm asking what the hell happened to the 41 gigs on my new 640 gig portable WD external drive...I don't see that anywhere with your reply but tyvm for trying. :o

fatcat

sorry, I edited my post. it should explain now

but in a sense, I did answer your question. you lose 24 Megabytes per Gigabyte plus whatever the OS uses for Recycle Bin (default is 10%)

Zendall

fatcat wrote:

sorry, I edited my post. it should explain now

but in a sense, I did answer your question. you lose 24 Megabytes per Gigabyte plus whatever the OS uses for Recycle Bin (default is 10%)

Thank you so much for the timely replies. Can you please talk to me like a newbie? I'm so out of my league here now, I see that but if you can talk to me anyway, I'd really appreciate it.

All I really want to know is if 41 missing gigs is "normal" with a 640 gig portable drive. You saying "you lose 24 Megabytes per Gigabyte plus whatever the OS uses for Recycle Bin (default is 10%" I'm not a real techie, I don't get it like you want me to. I'd love to know what it all means & I'm very sure I could understand it some day, but tonight is not that night, not for me.

The reason I'm here at all is because about 3 years ago I stumbled across this board when I was considering building my own system. Circumstances prevented me from being able to do this. I got many nice & informative replies & did a few times after with various questions. I see now, a little over 2 years later, this board has since switched gears. It seems if you're not a real, as my friend puts it..."propeller head"...this isn't where I should be asking my questions.

Annes

Yes, it's normal. There is nothing wrong with your drive.

fatcat

Annes wrote:

Yes, it's normal. There is nothing wrong with your drive.

I apologize for being too technical, I've been around Icrontic so long I just assume everyone is smarter than me

Zendall

Annes wrote:

Yes, it's normal. There is nothing wrong with your drive.

Thanks...and I still don't understand why my new drive needs a whopping 41 gigs to itself, lol. What's it doing with all that "space" anyway?

fatcat

It's not that your computer is using those 41 gigs, they just don't exist. Hard drive manufactures build hard drives using base 10 (10,100,1000,10000, etc.) Computers on the other hand, use binary.

For example, a 1 terabyte hard drive (1000 gigs) is only 931 gigs to the computer(windows). Blame hard drive manufactures for confusing the consumer and not using binary, heh

Thrax

Hard drive manufacturers list the gigabyte capacity of the drive as though 1GB contains 1000MB. For example, a 250GB hard drive theoretically has 250,000GB of space.

In reality, computers count 1024 megabytes to the gig. So, when you put that 250GB drive in the PC: 250,000/1024 = 244GB, or about 6 gigs less than the manufacturer said.

They do this because putting whole, round numbers on a box looks better than numbers like "244GB" or "976GB" instead of 250GB or 1TB.

Zendall

fatcat & Thrax, Thanks so much for the break down on this, much appreciated. I have an internal drive of the same size by WD coming in a few days to replace the 2nd drive in my laptop. I guess I should expect the same amount of space from it as well.

primesuspect

I had a conversation with my girlfriend about "Size vs. reality" recently. It didn't go well.

fatcat

primesuspect wrote:

I had a conversation with my girlfriend about "Size vs. reality" recently. It didn't go well.

optical inch

ardichoke

primesuspect wrote:

I had a conversation with my girlfriend about "Size vs. reality" recently. It didn't go well.

"Well maybe if you quit converting the size to powers of two, you wouldn't be so disappointed!"