I understand the basic concept here that HD capacity will never be quite what the manufacturer claims, since HD manufacturers like to think that 1 MB = 1,000,000 Bytes, while computers know the truth, that 1 MB = 1,048,576 Bytes. Plus, when formatting, some space will be lost to file system overhead.
What I'm unclear on is exactly how much total space should be lost. So far, the largest drive I've had is a 40 GB, so the file space loss as been minimal. Now that I'm looking at 320 GB and 500 GB drives for my new build, I'm seeing many people on New Egg complain about lost file space, and wondering if these loses are drive errors or completely normal.
What's caught my eye so far:
■ A 320 GB Drive with 298 GB of actual storage
■ A 500 GB Drive with 465 GB of actual storage
At first, not being used to large hard drives, I thought something was wrong here. Now, I'm starting to think these numbers are exactly what they should be. One New Egg user pointed out that you should expect to lose 7% to the math issue and file system overhead, which is what was lost in both of the above examples.
I'd appreciate some comments from the forum's readers as to whether those numbers look like defective hard drives, or exactly what should be expected.
Thanks
What I'm unclear on is exactly how much total space should be lost. So far, the largest drive I've had is a 40 GB, so the file space loss as been minimal. Now that I'm looking at 320 GB and 500 GB drives for my new build, I'm seeing many people on New Egg complain about lost file space, and wondering if these loses are drive errors or completely normal.
What's caught my eye so far:
■ A 320 GB Drive with 298 GB of actual storage
■ A 500 GB Drive with 465 GB of actual storage
At first, not being used to large hard drives, I thought something was wrong here. Now, I'm starting to think these numbers are exactly what they should be. One New Egg user pointed out that you should expect to lose 7% to the math issue and file system overhead, which is what was lost in both of the above examples.
I'd appreciate some comments from the forum's readers as to whether those numbers look like defective hard drives, or exactly what should be expected.
Thanks