1TB Seagate external hard drive, i formatted to the point where it says ''local disk'' and has 929GB out of 931GB

[Alonsomidorikawa]

it has 929GB out of 931GB, what can i do with it? and, did it format correctly?

 

[WyomingKnott]

Is that 929 out of 931 USED or FREE? If it's free, sounds good to me. Hard drives are sold by the Terabyte, 10^9 bytes. However, PCs measure them in Gibibytes, 2^30 bytes. So it never looks as large in real life as it did in the magazine ad.

 

[Paperdoc]

WyomingKnott is correct. You have NOT done anything wrong, and you have NOT lost any capacity. The trouble entirely is in the way two different companies choose to use the term "GB". HDD makers start by saying a thousand is a thousand. But Windows says a Kilobyte actually has 1024 Bytes - it's using a different "ruler" to measure exactly the same thing. If you measure something a foot long and someone tells you it is exactly 12 inches, but someone else says it is 30.4 cm, you know they are using different systems. But what HDD makers and Microsoft do is just confusing!

 

[WyomingKnott]

Of the two measures, the Gibibyte makes more sense to me since everything in the computer's addressing is binary. But the term has never caught on; the OS (not just Microsoft; try any Linux system) uses binary gigs but the term Gigabyte.

 

[gatortpk]

Of the two measures, the Gibibyte makes more sense to me since everything in the computer's addressing is binary. But the term has never caught on; the OS (not just Microsoft; try any Linux system) uses binary gigs but the term Gigabyte.

OS X actually reports GB now (since 2013?) instead of GiB so a mounted HDD actually reports the same as the HDD manufacturer advertises.

But I find it confusing too be cause everyone else uses GiB and displays as GB. I have to remember which "GB" it is now.

The real solution would be for Microsoft and Linux to replace GB with GiB (some Linux does this now?) and it would all make sense and be consistent.