Question Overhead on solid state drives

[michont]

Hopefully, this is an easy question for somebody. I am getting a 120 gb ssd. Normally, when I look in my computer to see my drives, the full size of a hard drive is not available as there is some overhead apparently. For instance, my 500gb drive says it's only 465gb. Is this loss of 35gb due to Windows overhead such as page file, recycle bin and system restore etc.? I'd hate to lose such valuable space on a ssd. I did read a bit of the windows 7 ssd optimization guide somewhere and am hoping these optimizations will restore some of this overhead I see.

Thanks,
Todd

 

[kelthic]

The loss is due to formatting the drive.
Refer to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Formatting-disks-and-drives for more information. The use of pagefile and whatnot will be on top of the loss from formatting.

 

[kelthic]

Also: http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/2005/harddrive_format.asp for a better explanation even.

 

[michont]

Great, thanks. I'll read up

 

[michont]

Best answer selected by michont.

 

[Super8731]

Actually there is no overhead here. Your hard drive is really 120 GB but Windows calculate sizes like this 1KB = 1024 Bytes Manufacturer calculates like this 1KB= 1000Bytes. Formatting has nothing to do with this.

 

[USAFRet]

Actually there is no overhead here. Your hard drive is really 120 GB but Windows calculate sizes like this 1KB = 1024 Bytes Manufacturer calculates like this 1KB= 1000Bytes. Formatting has nothing to do with this.

While you are 100% correct, and the info in the 'Best Answer' is wrong...this is a 9 year old thread.