How to use full space of HDD

sk0t0s · 17 Apr 2012

Hi guys, quick question about HDD space.

I noticed everytime i buy new 500gig HDD it will recognise only 465gig. I also checked in disk management it say 465gig also. I wonder where the other 35gig goes.:)

Is there any explanation about this?

marsmimar · 17 Apr 2012

We humans use 1000MB as equal to 1GB. Computers say 1024MB = 1GB. If you divide out 500GB (500,000,000,000 bytes) by 1024 by 1024 by 1024, it comes out to 465.661GB. Manufacturers like to use the base 10 system because the consumer thinks he's getting a true 500GB drive.

sk0t0s · 17 Apr 2012

marsmimar said:

We humans use 1000MB as equal to 1GB. Computers say 1024MB = 1GB. If you divide out 500GB (500,000,000,000 bytes) by 1024 it comes out to 465.661GB. Manufacturers like to use the base 10 system because the consumer thinks he's getting a true 500GB drive.

whoa that was quick... thank you so much now i understand and i can explain it to my friends after i build their pc's they're asking about the HDD space.. so annoying :)

marsmimar · 17 Apr 2012

You're very welcome!

DeaconFrost · 17 Apr 2012

You could always show them the hard drive boxes. It's always been explained there, at least for the last decade or so, assuming you buy any retail hard drives.

I'm always quite surprised that this is still asked, all these years later.