- Apr 11, 2014
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Ever wondered why a 1 TB hard drive (for example) have only 931 GB of storage space? Let us see:
Basics:
We all know that 1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes
But according to hard drive manufacturers, 1 Kilobyte = 1000 Bytes!
Since the Operating Systems are of 2 power (i.e. 2^5 = 32, 2^6 = 64) bits, they address the storage media in powers of 2 such as 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and so on..
Now, the Calculation:
As said, according to manufacturers, 1 Terabyte = 10^12 Bytes = 1,000,000,000,000 Bytes.. Now the O.S. addresses it as follows:
1,000,000,000,000 Bytes / 1024 = 976,562,500 Kilobytes
976,562,500 Kilobytes / 1024 = 953,674.31640625 Megabytes
953,674.31640625 Megabytes / 1024 = 931.322574615478515625 Gigabytes (931 GB Approx.)
So the Space Loss here for every drive is about 6.87% which means you lose 1 TB of storage space for every 14 TB !! (a 14 TB drive will have only 13 TB of usable space)
You can multiply 0.931322574615478515625 (0.931 approx) with any drive capacity to get the usable storage space of that drive.
For example: (16 GB) * (0.931322574615478515625) = 14.90116119384765625 GB (14.9 GB approx.)
I hope this thread helps some people and if any one have any suggestions/mistakes, send me a private message so that I can correct it
Basics:
We all know that 1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes
But according to hard drive manufacturers, 1 Kilobyte = 1000 Bytes!
Since the Operating Systems are of 2 power (i.e. 2^5 = 32, 2^6 = 64) bits, they address the storage media in powers of 2 such as 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and so on..
Now, the Calculation:
As said, according to manufacturers, 1 Terabyte = 10^12 Bytes = 1,000,000,000,000 Bytes.. Now the O.S. addresses it as follows:
1,000,000,000,000 Bytes / 1024 = 976,562,500 Kilobytes
976,562,500 Kilobytes / 1024 = 953,674.31640625 Megabytes
953,674.31640625 Megabytes / 1024 = 931.322574615478515625 Gigabytes (931 GB Approx.)
So the Space Loss here for every drive is about 6.87% which means you lose 1 TB of storage space for every 14 TB !! (a 14 TB drive will have only 13 TB of usable space)
You can multiply 0.931322574615478515625 (0.931 approx) with any drive capacity to get the usable storage space of that drive.
For example: (16 GB) * (0.931322574615478515625) = 14.90116119384765625 GB (14.9 GB approx.)
I hope this thread helps some people and if any one have any suggestions/mistakes, send me a private message so that I can correct it
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