1810gb available on a new 2tb drive?!

VinnyVincent

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Aug 5, 2017
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Is that normal? All my other drives have been under 500gb and I am used to seeing maybe 10gb not available from the get go, but almost 200gb missing IMO is bordering on false advertising. That's a pretty good chunk of storage space. That's almost 10%

I guess I'm just trying to understand why manufacturers do this and whether or not only being able to use 1810gb out of a 2tb drive is the norm...
 
Solution
Contrary to the above comments, it is NOT "formatting".

It is simply a difference in how it is counted.
Base 10 vs Base 2
Human vs machine
Gigabyte vs gibibyte.

This is absolutely normal and to be expected.
Read more here:
http://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Difference-between-GiB-and-GB


There was even a class action lawsuit about it, which resulted in the fine print on the hard drive box that no one ever reads:
https://www.cnet.com/news/gigabytes-vs-gibibytes-class-action-suit-nears-end/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/attention-hard-drive-manufacturers-most-people-believe-that-a-kilobyte-is-1024-bytes/
2TB drive actual capacity is 2'000'000'000'000 bytes.
This translates to 2'000'000'000'000/1024/1024/1024 = 1862 GB

When you format the drive, some part of storage goes to file system structures, metadata and other things. So you're missing ~ 50GB of storage. That is not 10% but closer to 2%.

Can you post screenshot from Disk Management? Most likely there are some hidden recovery partitions on your drive.
 
Contrary to the above comments, it is NOT "formatting".

It is simply a difference in how it is counted.
Base 10 vs Base 2
Human vs machine
Gigabyte vs gibibyte.

This is absolutely normal and to be expected.
Read more here:
http://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Difference-between-GiB-and-GB


There was even a class action lawsuit about it, which resulted in the fine print on the hard drive box that no one ever reads:
https://www.cnet.com/news/gigabytes-vs-gibibytes-class-action-suit-nears-end/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/attention-hard-drive-manufacturers-most-people-believe-that-a-kilobyte-is-1024-bytes/
 
Solution
Untitled.jpg



SkyNet; I'm not sure if this is the info you wanted to see?

And also unrelated: DarkBreeze I know you're watching so I hope you are proud of me for getting it right this time lol:pt1cable:
 
But anyways I blame myself for assuming it's the manufacturers fault that I am ignorant on the subject:)

The problem is, I thought it was supposed to be 2'000'000'000'000/1000, not 1024. Forgot that it wasn't an even 1000 and assumed that 2TB= 2000GB
 


Yeah that was my math error in action again. I was thinking 1.81TB = 1810GB.Maybe one day I'll catch on to this computer stuff:)
 


Thanks, I really appreciate this. This really breaks it down to the nitty gritty. I was really into computing back in high school. I think I had bought my first PC back in ninth grade- an imac G3 with a 333mhz processor and 6MB of ram. I thought that thing was a beast hahaha...
but anyhow I took a long lapse from computers for a good 10-15 years and when I came back a year or so ago, I didn't even know what a GiB, or Mib was. I just thought it was some fancy tereminology for gigabyte and megabyte, so your link was very educational for me.