1TB Drive - 930GB Available, can I get to the rest?

Hey all,

I have a 1TB drive. However, the available capacity is 930GB (i know the actual storage space is always smaller than advertised) but I was wondering, is there any way I can access or use that missing 70GB?


If not, can anyone tell me, is the drive just made as a 930GB drive, or is the other 70GB tied up doing something else?


Cheers

amacachi

It's 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, 10^12 bytes. Windows defines a kilobyte as 2^10 (1024) bytes, a megabyte as 2^10 kilobytes etc. Continue that upwards and the 1,000,000,000,000 bytes is only around the 930GB mark.

Ah I see. I assume that's why RAM is calculated that way?


Cheers for clearing that up. Never crossed my mind.

c-note

This is because there are 2 different definition of a TB or GB

the word "kilo" means 1000
so you would think that a kilobyte was 1000 bytes, but its not
1Kb=1024 bytes (i wont go into why)

equally mega usually means million (1000000)
so you would think a megabyte = 1000000 bytes, but its not
1MB=1024Kb = 1048576bytes

so now you're thinking well
if 1Kb=1024B
1MB=1024KB
then
1GB=1024MB right??
well according to computers, yes

but the clever guys who sell storage decided to redefing 1GB as one billion bytes, (a true GB is slightly larger than this)

so when they sell you 1000 of their GB they're only selling you 931 real Gb

equally they advertise 1TB as 1000GB, whereas it really should be 1024GB

so the answer is you're not "missing" any storage, its just that windows and hard drive manufacturers define GB's and TB's differently.