Solved How to get 2tb to have 2tb capacity rather than 1.81tb?

[green elephant]

is it possible? i have a external hard drive of 2tb and windows properties says it is 1.81TB.is there a way i can get those 200gbs or so?

 

[bigmck]

A 2TB disk is not really 2TB as you found out. Why he asks? When labeling it is figured as 1000 GB in a TB, but that is not true. It is really 1024 GB in a TB which when divided out comes to less than 2 TB. == As I think about it, did I get that backwards? Someone confirm that for me.

 

[green elephant]

saying it's really 1024gb doesn't answer my question, but tells me it'd be more than 2tb. What do u mean divided out

 

[bigmck]

Divide 1024 GB into 2 TB and see what you get.

 

[Alpha]

Here's the thing with hard drives, there are really two definitions of a gigabyte. A gigabyte is really equal to 1024 megabytes; however, for simplicity sake, sometimes people use 1 gigabyte = 1000 megabytes.

A lot of hard drive and computer manufacturers use the later equation. Why do you ask? Because it allows them to market a drive as being 2 terabytes even though it is really 1.81.

 

[green elephant]

A 2TB disk is not really 2TB as you found out. Why he asks? When labeling it is figured as 1000 GB in a TB, but that is not true. It is really 1024 GB in a TB which when divided out comes to less than 2 TB. == As I think about it, did I get that backwards? Someone confirm that for me.

Divide 1024 GB into 2 TB and see what you get.

 

[green elephant]

Here's the thing with hard drives, there are really two definitions of a gigabyte. A gigabyte is really equal to 1024 megabytes; however, for simplicity sake, sometimes people use 1 gigabyte = 1000 megabytes.

A lot of hard drive and computer manufacturers use the later equation. Why do you ask? Because it allows them to market a drive as being 2 terabytes even though it is really 1.81.

so there's no way of getting the extra GBs?

 

[bigmck]

.
so there's no way of getting the extra GBs?

As your division told you, there really isn't extra GB. They advertise it a 2 TB, but it really isn't

 

[b0bl335wa993r]

as told by Alpha already, it's 1024MB for 1GB. So it's the difference.Commercially they are measured as 1000MB = 1GB

 

[green elephant]

.
so there's no way of getting the extra GBs?

As your division told you, there really isn't extra GB. They advertise it a 2 TB, but it really isn't

I've always noticed any sort of storage device has less than they state it has, just wanted to know if there was possibly a way of accessing it, of course if it even existed...

 

[Alpha]

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

 

[gb sllacker]

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​

 

[fireberd]

There is also disk management "overhead" that eats up some of what is available.

 

[pbcopter]

See this:

Drive displays a smaller capacity than the indicated size on the drive label

Edit: I just noticed the dates of this thread.

 

[Alejandro85]

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

 

[Ganesh Ujwal]

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.