1810gb available on a new 2tb drive?!

VinnyVincent · Dec 1, 2017

Is that normal? All my other drives have been under 500gb and I am used to seeing maybe 10gb not available from the get go, but almost 200gb missing IMO is bordering on false advertising. That's a pretty good chunk of storage space. That's almost 10%

I guess I'm just trying to understand why manufacturers do this and whether or not only being able to use 1810gb out of a 2tb drive is the norm...

SkyNetRising · Dec 1, 2017

2TB drive actual capacity is 2'000'000'000'000 bytes.
This translates to 2'000'000'000'000/1024/1024/1024 = 1862 GB

When you format the drive, some part of storage goes to file system structures, metadata and other things. So you're missing ~ 50GB of storage. That is not 10% but closer to 2%.

Can you post screenshot from Disk Management? Most likely there are some hidden recovery partitions on your drive.

kraelic · Dec 1, 2017

hard drive formatted capacity uses 1024 size while marketing uses 1000.

My '1 TB' drive loses 80GB when formatted. Showing a 919GB capacity so 2TB is formatted to 1.8TB

USAFRet · Dec 1, 2017

Contrary to the above comments, it is NOT "formatting".

It is simply a difference in how it is counted.
Base 10 vs Base 2
Human vs machine
Gigabyte vs gibibyte.

This is absolutely normal and to be expected.
Read more here:
http://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Difference-between-GiB-and-GB

There was even a class action lawsuit about it, which resulted in the fine print on the hard drive box that no one ever reads:
https://www.cnet.com/news/gigabytes-vs-gibibytes-class-action-suit-nears-end/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/attention-hard-drive-manufacturers-most-people-believe-that-a-kilobyte-is-1024-bytes/

4745454b · Dec 1, 2017

I've been looking at buying a new 8TB drive. Some sites have been nice and have warned people you'll get ~7.2TB, not the full 8TB. How would you like to lose 800GB? That's the cost of 1000 vs 1024.

VinnyVincent · Dec 1, 2017

SkyNet; I'm not sure if this is the info you wanted to see?

And also unrelated: DarkBreeze I know you're watching so I hope you are proud of me for getting it right this time lol :pt1cable:

VinnyVincent · Dec 1, 2017

But anyways I blame myself for assuming it's the manufacturers fault that I am ignorant on the subject

The problem is, I thought it was supposed to be 2'000'000'000'000/1000, not 1024. Forgot that it wasn't an even 1000 and assumed that 2TB= 2000GB

SkyNetRising · Dec 1, 2017

VinnyVincent :

Well - your info was wrong.
You said there is 1810 GB available, but as you can see in the screenshot it's 1862GB or 1.81TB.
So - you're not missing any storage.

VinnyVincent · Dec 1, 2017

SkyNetRising :

Yeah that was my math error in action again. I was thinking 1.81TB = 1810GB.Maybe one day I'll catch on to this computer stuff

VinnyVincent · Dec 1, 2017

USAFRet :

Thanks, I really appreciate this. This really breaks it down to the nitty gritty. I was really into computing back in high school. I think I had bought my first PC back in ninth grade- an imac G3 with a 333mhz processor and 6MB of ram. I thought that thing was a beast hahaha...
but anyhow I took a long lapse from computers for a good 10-15 years and when I came back a year or so ago, I didn't even know what a GiB, or Mib was. I just thought it was some fancy tereminology for gigabyte and megabyte, so your link was very educational for me.

Search

1810gb available on a new 2tb drive?!

VinnyVincent

Honorable

USAFRet

SkyNetRising

Titan

kraelic

Distinguished

USAFRet

Titan

4745454b

Titan

VinnyVincent

Honorable

VinnyVincent

Honorable

SkyNetRising

Titan

VinnyVincent

Honorable

VinnyVincent

Honorable

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page