Formatting Hard Drive LOSS

[RoyA2015]

Wow.. that's NUTS !!

So again, for the 2nd time, I threatened to buy another external hard drive. I currently have a Seagate Backup Plus 3TB hard drive.. or should I say 2.729TB

You don't get what you pay for, once the external hard drive is formated.

Try going to an 8TB HDD, and you get 7.277 TB, that's almost 1TB taken.

72.3% of 1TB taken out of 8TB HDD.

Yes, hard drives work in Base 2. So it's not 1000 Bytes = 1KB, it's 1024 Bytes = 1KB

Magic number is 9.032948936025301615397135416667% taken from a hard drive, when it get's formated.

For math, it would be calculated.. Using a 3TB HDD as an example.
So it's technically, 3000579911679.9999999999999999999 Bytes in 3TB.
3000579911679.9999999999999999999 x 0.09032948936025301615397135416667 =

271040851206.68749491373697916667 Bytes Taken.
That's.. 252.426463371783 GB Taken
That's.. 258484.698492706 MB Taken
or that's... 0.246510218136507 TB Taken

Just figured I'd post about this.. might be fun for some to read, and think about for those that don't know or realize what's going on.

I want to get a new HDD.. But I think I'll stick with my 3TB hdd for now.


1000193303893.3333333333333333333 Bytes = 931.502602895101 GB, 953858.665364583 MB, 0.909670510639747 TB (1 TB)
2000386607786.6666666666666666666 Bytes = 1863.00520579021 GB, 1907717.33072917 MB, 1.819341021279494 TB (2 TB)
3000579911679.9999999999999999999 Bytes = 2794.50780868530 GB, 2861575.99609375 MB, 2.729011531919241 TB (3 TB)
4000773215573.3333333333333333332 Bytes = 3726.01041158040 GB, 3815434.66145833 MB, 3.638682042558988 TB (4 TB)
5000966519466.6666666666666666665 Bytes = 4657.51301447551 GB, 4769293.32682292 MB, 4.548352553198740 TB (5 TB)
6001159823359.9999999999999999998 Bytes = 5589.01561737061 GB, 5723151.99218750 MB, 5.458023063838490 TB (6 TB)
7001353127253.3333333333333333331 Bytes = 6520.51822026570 GB, 6677010.65755208 MB, 6.367693574478220 TB (7 TB)
8001546431146.6666666666666666664 Bytes = 7452.02082316081 GB, 7630869.32291667 MB, 7.277364085117980 TB (8 TB)
9001739735039.9999999999999999997 Bytes = 8383.52342605591 GB, 8584727.98828125 MB, 8.187034595757720 TB (9 TB)
10001933038933.333333333333333333 Bytes = 9315.02602895101 GB, 9538586.65364583 MB, 9.096705106397470 TB (10 TB)

Didn't write down the loss for each one, but I'm sure someone could figure it out, and post it if they wanted to. The less the capacity, the less it takes it seems.

Formating a Hard Drive takes 9.032948936025301615397135416667 %

Go purchase a 10TB hard drive, and it takes 90.33% of 1TB to format it. Your damn near almost left with 9TB of storage space. Which is 924.97 GB taken, if my calculations are correct.

 

[joex444]

This has nothing to do with formatting, it's simply that hard drive manufacturers use base 10 and Windows uses base 2. The factor you're looking for is 10^12 / 2^40.

To reiterate: 1TB drives are 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A TB in Windows is base 2, not base 10 so it looks wrong.

You are not losing anything. This is simply a case of not understanding units (and significant figures for that matter).

 

[USAFRet]

it is NOT a case of 'formatting'.
It is a case of base 2 vs base 10, and advertising.

An advertised 1TB drive shows in Windows as 931GB. Always.
A 2 TB drive shows as 1.81TB.
A 3TB shows a 2.72GB.

Read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte
http://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/high-def-disc-faqs/17953-gb-vs-gib-explanation-storage-capacity.html


You are not 'losing' anything.

 

[Pskonejott]

Strictly speaking a terabyte is 1000^4 bytes.
A tebibyte (TiB) per the ISO standard is 1024^4 bytes.

Most software developers still use TB to denote TiB, storage manufacturers continue to specify drive capacities in TB as they have always done. If you keep an eye out you'll come across certain pieces of software using the ISO standards, but it's not really all that common.

If anything, the only change that's going to happen is Microsoft will start using TiB (unlikely), and storage vendors continue to sell in TB. It's highly unlikely that you'll start seeing storage vendors selling in TiB anytime in the near future.

 

[CountMike]

Formatting also takes it's toll depending on sector size.