3tb HD only 2794gb?

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Solution
J
Hard drive manufacturers define 1 gigabyte as exactly 1,000,000,000 bytes.
By their definition, a 45GB hard drive is exactly 45,000,000,000 bytes.
The true definition of 1 gigabyte is actually 1,073,741,824 bytes:
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte
To obtain the true size in gigabytes of a 45GB hard drive you must divide the manufacturer's size in bytes by the number of bytes in a gigabyte:
45,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = 41.9
As such, the actual reported size in gigabytes will always be smaller than the manufacturer's advertised size.
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jitpublisher

Splendid
May 16, 2006
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Hard drive manufacturers define 1 gigabyte as exactly 1,000,000,000 bytes.
By their definition, a 45GB hard drive is exactly 45,000,000,000 bytes.
The true definition of 1 gigabyte is actually 1,073,741,824 bytes:
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte
To obtain the true size in gigabytes of a 45GB hard drive you must divide the manufacturer's size in bytes by the number of bytes in a gigabyte:
45,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = 41.9
As such, the actual reported size in gigabytes will always be smaller than the manufacturer's advertised size.
 
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Solution
Shockeray

Shockeray

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Nov 30, 2012
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Ah, I see now, it's because of the difference between PC file size, which is actually measured in the binary tebibyte (yes that's how it's spelled) and the HD is measured by the decimal terabyte.
Tebibyte = TiB = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes
Terabyte = TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes (Tb stands for teribit, 1/8 of a TB)
Therefore, when my computer measures the bytes in the HD using the binary system, it shows it as smaller than 3TiB even though it is still 3 trillion bytes. But of course nobody wants to correctly label everything, so they mark all the different measuring systems as all being megabye/gigabyte/terabyte.
 
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Shockeray

Shockeray

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Nov 30, 2012
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No it actually has 3,000,457,228,288 bytes when I rick click the drive and pull up the properties window. But when it is simplifying the number, it uses binary Tebibytes. If you take that number and start dividing it by 1024, after 4 times (1024^4 Bytes = 1 TiB) you get ~2.7289 Tebibytes, but it says "2.72 TB" which stands for Terabytes, not TiB which is what it is really talking about. If it was really using Terabytes, or TB, it would say "3.0 TB" (1000^4 Bytes = 1 TB).
 
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