Question After Reformating Drives & Reinstalling Windows, SSDs Show Decreased Space

[Joemama742]

Hi All,

This may be easy for all of you, but I'm stumped and couldn't find a solution elsewhere on the internet. I recently had a motherboard begin to fail (I think, still waiting on a replacement to ship) and in the process of figuring out what was wrong with my PC, I reinstalled Windows a couple of times to remove the chance of faulty drivers causing the issue. (For reference, I think my PCIE port has failed because anything other than the Windows Basic Graphics Driver crashes any GPU I put in there). I did create a recovery backup on the drive, however, I deleted it when I reinstalled Windows. Now, while waiting for replacement parts, I notice that both of my drives do not show their full capacity. For example, my 500 GB SSD is only showing 465.09 GB of total space and my 250 GB is only showing 232.79

Both are formatted for NTFS and seem to be working fine, but the capacity on both is lower than their max.

Any ideas? I attached screenshots below. Apologies for the low resolution, as I mentioned before I'm stuck at 720p until the new Mobo comes and I can install proper drivers. Link: 1 & 2 to the screenshots.

Thank you!

 

[Lafong]

For example, my 500 GB SSD is only showing 465.09 GB of total space and my 250 GB is only showing 232.79

That's totally normal.

You haven't lost anything. They have as much usable capacity as they ever had.

 

[USAFRet]

Any ideas?

Yes.
There is absolutely nothing wrong. It is supposed to be like this.

You are simply seeing a difference in counting units.
Base 2 vs Base 10
Computer vs Human

Nothing is lost, there is nothing to fix.

 

[Joemama742]

What do you mean? It used to say 500GB of storage (minus what was used by windows). Now it's only showing 465 of total space.

 

[USAFRet]

What do you mean? It used to say 500GB of storage (minus what was used by windows). Now it's only showing 465 of total space.

500GB is Base 10 (Human)
465GB is Base 2 (Computer)

ALL drives are like this.
An advertised 1TB drive is seen in Windows as 931GB.
2TB, seen as 1.91 TB.

Gigabytes vs gibibytes.

This has nothing to do with space consumed by Windows or any other software.
It simply is what it is.

Your drive was always like this.

For your reading pleasure:

GB vs. GiB: The Difference in Bytes

It's easy to think gigabytes and gibibytes are equal. However, the distinction can cost money and time. Click for a breakdown of GB vs. GiB.

history-computer.com

What is gibibyte (GiB)? | Definition from TechTarget

Explore the meaning of gibibyte (GiB), what it's used for and how it compares with a gigabyte.

www.techtarget.com

ResearchDrive - Understanding Storage Units GB vs. GiB

Higher Education Knowledge Base content management, sharing and collaboration platform.

kb.wisc.edu

Convert GiB to gigabyte - Conversion of Measurement Units

Do a quick conversion: 1 gibibytes = 1.073741824 gigabytes using the online calculator for metric conversions. Check the chart for more details.

www.convertunits.com

 

[Lafong]

What do you mean? It used to say 500GB of storage (minus what was used by windows). Now it's only showing 465 of total space.

There are tens of thousands of words about it on the Internet. Help yourself to it.

Discussion about the topic tends to lead toward contention and disagreements. I'll refrain, but do spend as much time as you want researching.

 

[Joemama742]

Thank you everyone! I still recall it showing more before the crashes but I've been researching and you are right, people go back and forth on it. I'm not sweating it. Thank you so much for the help!