Hard Drive - why is 2 TB only 1.8 TB ??

[jm1996a]

Hi Folks - new member, first thread.

I have several hard drives, mostly Western Digital.

The advertised 2 TB only shows up as 1.8 TB, and so keeping it below the 80-90 percent full means it is pretty much "full" at about 1.5 TB.

Ditto my 1 TB, which shows up as 900 MB, and my 1.5 TB which shows up as 1.3 TB.

So the questions:
- why do they advertise as 2 TB when its only 90 percent of that ?
- am i doing the right thing by keeping the drives below about 80-90 percent of the 1.8 TB max capacity ?

- OR -

- do i really have a full 2 TB capacity, and its just formatted to display "full" at the 90% point of 2 TB, which is 1.8 TB (in other words i can safely store up to a full 1.8 TB point, rather than 80-90 percent of THAT).......

thanks guys, i'll look forward to the reply,

jm

 

[BrightBlessings]

Hi Folks - new member, first thread.

I have several hard drives, mostly Western Digital.

The advertised 2 TB only shows up as 1.8 TB, and so keeping it below the 80-90 percent full means it is pretty much "full" at about 1.5 TB.

Ditto my 1 TB, which shows up as 900 MB, and my 1.5 TB which shows up as 1.3 TB.

So the questions:
- why do they advertise as 2 TB when its only 90 percent of that ?
- am i doing the right thing by keeping the drives below about 80-90 percent of the 1.8 TB max capacity ?

- OR -

- do i really have a full 2 TB capacity, and its just formatted to display "full" at the 90% point of 2 TB, which is 1.8 TB (in other words i can safely store up to a full 1.8 TB point, rather than 80-90 percent of THAT).......

thanks guys, i'll look forward to the reply,

jm

Goodaye jm
Have a read of this

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/23890-hdds-advertized-size-vs-actual-size.html

Bright Blessings

 

[nitrous]

Because it is advertising trick. The actual size of 2TB hard drive is 2,000,000,000,000 bytes (yeah, 2 million millions), which roughly converts into 1.8ish TB. Same goes for every hard drive.

 

[zigzag3143]

Hi Folks - new member, first thread.

I have several hard drives, mostly Western Digital.

The advertised 2 TB only shows up as 1.8 TB, and so keeping it below the 80-90 percent full means it is pretty much "full" at about 1.5 TB.

Ditto my 1 TB, which shows up as 900 MB, and my 1.5 TB which shows up as 1.3 TB.

So the questions:
- why do they advertise as 2 TB when its only 90 percent of that ?
- am i doing the right thing by keeping the drives below about 80-90 percent of the 1.8 TB max capacity ?

- OR -

- do i really have a full 2 TB capacity, and its just formatted to display "full" at the 90% point of 2 TB, which is 1.8 TB (in other words i can safely store up to a full 1.8 TB point, rather than 80-90 percent of THAT).......

thanks guys, i'll look forward to the reply,

jm

Jm Hi and welcome

Drives have bad sectors. All of them do. Some mfrs will let drives out with 5% bad some 12%. It is a fact of life. Your 1TB-10% bad sectors=~900 Mb.

When they are manufactured the bad sectors are marked so no data can be written there, and are then useless.

Sorry about that

Ken

 

[Dwarf]

Hi jm1996a and welcome to Windows 7 Forums

For an explanation of this, see: http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/23890-hdds-advertized-size-vs-actual-size.html

 

[theog]

Take a look here:
Hard Drive Size Capacities Calculator

 

[whs]

Because it is advertising trick. The actual size of 2TB hard drive is 2,000,000,000,000 bytes (yeah, 2 million millions), which roughly converts into 1.8ish TB. Same goes for every hard drive.

It is not a trick. It is a matter of mathematics. The advertised number is decimal but the system shows a binary number which is 7% less in the GB range and about 10% less in the TB range. But both numbers reflect the same number of bytes. It all has to do with the fact that 1K is 1000 bytes in decimal but 1024 bytes in binary.

 

[pparks1]

It is not a trick. It is a matter of mathematics.

Thank you. I get tired of reading about this year after year as if it's one shady manufacturer doing it and taking advantage of customers.

To the OP: I'm not irritated that you didn't understand this...it's just the people who report that it's intentional misleading through advertising. It's just the way it is. It's easier to simplify for humans.

 

[whs]

LOL, on another forum last year, a Canadian lady even wanted to take the manufacturer to court for false advertising. We had a hard time to keep her from doing that.

 

[pacinitaly]

Take a look here:
Hard Drive Size Capacities Calculator

close

 

[neo101]

Western digital has a new way of basic/low level formatting their latest compatable drives to get more out of them(less waste).

You will need to research this and see if the new software works with your hard disk and reformat it!

Only works with Win 7 as far as I remember - other operating systems will not load onto new type of formatted drive!

 

[jm1996a]

guys, thanks for the fantastic set of replies, i had no idea i would get so many.

i think it can be summarized by the terminology differences between operating systems and storage drive manufacturers, the root of which is the difference between 1000 bytes and 1 Kbyte = 1024 bytes.

ditto for mega, giga, tera, etc.

adds up to about 7 percent when you're talking Tera Bytes capacity.

this link here does a good job elaborating, so thanks very much for sending

Why is my hard drive smaller than the advertised capacity? - [H]ard|Forum

thanks again guys !!

jm

 

[Dwarf]

You're welcome, jm1996a.

It's much simpler than that. Drives are advertised using decimal figures, where 1GB is 1 x 10^9 bytes. A computer doesn't work on the decimal system, instead it works on the binary system where 1GB is 1 x 2^30 bytes. Since the binary equivalent is greater than the decimal, it follows that when you have a HDD that is advertised as having 500GB in decimal terms, it in fact has 465GiB in binary terms. To avoid confusion, the binary suffixes are sometimes written as GiB instead of GB.

 

[whs]

adds up to about 7 percent when you're talking Tera Bytes capacity

The 7% applies to the Gigabyte range. In the Terabyte range it is actually 10.9% (say 11% because it is 10.995116).

 

[profdlp]

My first computer came with a 650MB drive. When Windows told me it was only 610MB I almost called the manufacturer to complain about getting ripped off - by a whole 40MB.

 

[whs]

My first computer came with a 650MB drive. When Windows told me it was only 610MB I almost called the manufacturer to complain about getting ripped off - by a whole 40MB.

i bet you were not the only one trying to make a fool of himself. LOL

 

[DeaconFrost]

LOL, on another forum last year, a Canadian lady even wanted to take the manufacturer to court for false advertising. We had a hard time to keep her from doing that.

There have been quite a few class action lawsuits over the years here in the States, and each one has been dismissed as far as I know. Honestly, not to sound like I'm taking a jab at the OP, but I can't honestly believe this is still a question or a matter of debate. It's been this way since hard drives were sold off the shelves, pretty much. It also explains the differences in "reporting" on the sides of the boxes, and in the documentation for any OEM system I've bought.

 

[profdlp]

...not to sound like I'm taking a jab at the OP, but I can't honestly believe this is still a question or a matter of debate. It's been this way since hard drives were sold off the shelves...

I've often wondered the same thing. The only thing I could come up with is that there are quite a few people who buy a computer, run it until it doesn't cut it anymore, then replace the whole works. They probably never thought about the size of their hard drive once they threw away the box the computer came in. (Unless they're one of those types who leave the manufacturer's giant sticker on the side of their case until it's all scroungy and dust laden.)

Maybe it's a sign of how easy a lot of computer-related tasks have become that more and more folks even attempt a do-it-yourself upgrade.

 

[omnimodis78]

It's best to ignore it otherwise it can drive you insane! I just put in a "2TB" drive (Western Digital Green), of which, the OS recognizes 1.81TB. Just rejoice that the cost of hard drives has dropped so much it's almost laughable!

 

[Sardonicus]

You need a calculator. Whenever I wanted to install a 50 Gb partition, I did the following math.

50 x 24 = 1200

50,000 + 1200 = 51,200

To create a 50 Gb partition, I used 51,208 to format.
No not 50,000, but 51200 or 51208.

The magic number being 24.

Drives sizes are so large these days that, I don't miss anything.
There's more than enough space for data, movies or music.
If not, I'll just buy another drive.

Like it was said earlier, if you think about it too long, you'll go mad.
It is what it is.