To much Free Space

[leftspeaker2000]

Hey guys i have an external HDD i have been using for maybe 6 months now running on my windows 7 pc. The HDD is 1.5 Tb with 1.36 being usable after format. My problem is for some reason it is report i have 72gb Free which i dont when i right click and go properties on the disk it says 1.29 TB free Capacity 1.36. So the numbers do not make sense, i have ran disk check and defrag and turned of system restore to no avail. Any help would be great.

 

[sminlal]

What program is it exactly that's telling you that you have 72GB free? If it's Disk Manager then it means your partition isn't using up the entire drive. Windows Explorer only reports the free space INSIDE the partition, Disk Manager reports the free space OUTSIDE ALL PARTITIONS on the ENTIRE DRIVE.

 

[leftspeaker2000]

Hey it is windows explore that is reporting the error, but if i go into disk management ( disk manger ? ) it says the same thing Capacity 1397 free soace 72.09gb 5% free. which is wrong

 

[sminlal]

I'm a little confused by your explanation.

In your first post you said: "i right click and go properties on the disk it says 1.29 TB free" and "some reason it is report i have 72gb Free"

...and in your second post you said: "windows explore that is reporting the error, but if i go into disk management ( disk manger ? ) it says the same thing Capacity 1397 free soace 72.09"

So if Windows Explorer and Disk Manager are reporting 72GB free, then what program is telling you that you have 1.29TB free?

Screenshots might help.

Just to repeat, the "free" space shown by disk manager is not the same as the "free" space shown by Windows Explorer. Let me draw an analogy:

You have a cabinet with four shelves in it for storing books. You organize the shelves so that each one holds different kinds of books - fiction on the top shelf, reference books on the 2nd shelf, and cook books on the 3rd shelf. In this analogy the shelves are partitions, which correspond to drive letters on your computer. The cabinet itself is analogous to the entire disk drive.

Windows Explorer tells you how much free space you have on EACH SHELF. If your reference books shelf has only a couple of books on it, Windows Explorer might report "90% free".

The partition map at the bottom of the middle pane of Disk Manager shows you the ENTIRE CABINET and tells you how much of the cabinet is in use. In this example, 25% of the cabinet is "free" because you haven't set up the bottom shelf to hold any books yet - it's analogous to unpartitioned space on your disk.

 

[leftspeaker2000]

Hey sorry i probably wrote my response at 3am , i have attached some pictures to show you whats going on.


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[sminlal]

Thanks for taking the time to upload the screenshots - now I can see exactly what you're seeing.

So what exactly is the problem with these figures? Are you concerned because you think 1.29TB plus 72GB doesn't add up to 1.36TB? Or are you confused as to why Windows Explorer shows a total capacity of 1.36TB while disk manager shows 1397.26GB?

The reason all these numbers seem different is because "TB" does not mean "1,000,000,000,000", and "GB" does not mean "1,000,000,000". "TB" really means "1024^4" and "GB" means "1024^3". You can see the difference if you compare the "Used Space" of "1,422,890,725,376" to "1.29TB", and the "Free Space" of "77,407,617,024" to "72.0GB"

Given the actual value of the TB and GB multipliers, the numbers all work out as they should. The "1397.26GB" shown by Disk Management is actually the same as the "1.36TB" capacity shown by Windows Explorer, which is 1,500,298,342,400 when written as a decimal number.

 

[leftspeaker2000]

Thank you very much for the clear explanation and the patients in solving my problem i clearly cannot add up number correctly. Some how i subtracted 1.29 from 1.36 and ended up with .01 rather then .07 although i am rather computer literate although still confuse my self with GB and TB as it seems like over night drives rapidly increased in size not to mention when deal with average files your working in the mb to Gb.


Best Regards