Also, I forgot to mention that they tend to round up. If you look up your drive on the internet it will give you the actual amount of gigabytes. If you divide that by 1000 it will give you "around" 2 terabytes but they tend to round it like horsepower in an engine. If you divide the actual amount of gigabytes by 1024 it should be 1.81. It's quasi-false advertising if you ask me. It's kinda like MBps vs Mbps
The reason the math doesn't add up at first blush is that it's not just the {binary} 1024 gb = 1 tb VS {decimal} 1000 gb = 1 tb where there is a labeling discrepancy. 1 tb = 1024 gb, 1 gb = 1024 mb, 1 mb = 1024 kb, 1 kb = 1024 b. All are labeled in decimal "measurements" not the binary equivalent.
So:
{decimal} 2 tb = 2 * (1000^4)/(1024^4) ~= {binary} 1.81 tb
See this:
Drive displays a smaller capacity than the indicated size on the drive label
Edit: I just noticed the dates of this thread.
This is an eternal struggle with Windows. gb sllacker is almost right (BTW, why resurrect such an old thread?). Basically HD manufacturers advertise in one measurement unit and Windows displays it in another.
HD advertisements come in Gigabytes or Terabytes which equal to 1,000,000,000 or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes respectively. That follows the meaning of the classic prefixes, a "kilo" means "one thousand", period. There is no two gigabyte or something like that, there is no "decimal" or "binary" gigabytes, such prefixes have a well defined meaning (multiples of 1000) and computers haven't changed that at all, just like kilometers, kilograms or anything else.
What Windows actually does is to use Gibibytes in calculations. Those are the "binary" prefixes which use multiples of 1024 instead. Note that all those have slightly different prefixes (KiB/MiB/GiB, NOT KB/MB/GB). Typical confusion comes from the fact that Windows does the math in GiB units, but displays GB everywhere. A long standing bug in Windows.
In fact, it should display 2TB=1.81TiB
Do you want to destroy your 2 TB? Please dont try to increase the size... i know it is impossible.
but you try, next error: your computer gives two errors: You need to format before using this Disk. do you want this error, then go ahead.
another error: USB not recognized. your wish.
please operate your 2 TB safely. i am telling with my experience.
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