Question Used space of 168MB on newly formatted SSD

[Lars Ericson]

I just formatted a brand new SSD that I put in my motherboard. With nothing on it, Windows is reporting 168MB of Used space and 931GB of free space. The 931GB constitutes 1,000,009,211,904 bytes of free space, which makes it a 1TB drive. But what is that other 168MB all about? I formatted it GPT.

 

[AllanGH]

Unallocated disks will report their full capacity, because they are essentially empty--completely, for all intents and purposes.

Formatting implies that you partitioned and formatted the resultant partition. Formatting puts "stuff" (filesystem and directory architecture) in place on the drive (on top of the partition tables that you wrote to the drive in the earlier step), and all of that takes-up space on the drive.

That's the 'discrepancy' you are observing.

As an analogy, think of it in this way:

You buy a new 2-drawer file cabinet.

Before you put it into use, you label the drawers, and put hanging folder frames in place. Then you put some Pendaflex hanging folders on the frames in both drawers.

Before you've even put anything useful into the file cabinet, you have arranged the storage space into meaningful units for your future use.

Then you start putting file folders into the Pendaflex folders, each of which is intended to hold logically associated discrete documents, and is labeled to that effect.

You have functionally partitioned and formatted your two drawer file cabinet, and you have yet to store a bill, invoice, or finished document in it.

All of the foregoing takes up some of the storage space that you could have used for storing things, but it makes it easier to find things when you need them.

 

[CountMike]

I just formatted a brand new SSD that I put in my motherboard. With nothing on it, Windows is reporting 168MB of Used space and 931GB of free space. The 931GB constitutes 1,000,009,211,904 bytes of free space, which makes it a 1TB drive. But what is that other 168MB all about? I formatted it GPT.

What does it looks like in Disk management ? There should be at least 3 or 4 partitions and maybe one unformatted partition if that SSD use Wear Leveling partition. C:\ partition would be one with windows on it and only one with a letter and therefore only one seen in File explorer.

 

[Lars Ericson]

OK maybe it needs 168MB just for the block map on 931GB. In Computer Management it just says Basic Healthy (Primary Partition). There is only one partition. If I look at Properties it says Type: Local Disk and File System: NTFS. I was just surprised that the block map was that big. However, as I said above, 931GB is actually a little over a terabyte, so there is no false advertising involved. I do get 1,000,009,211,904 bytes, even after the block map of 177,098,752 bytes is set aside.