Skoro

i was wondering why when you buy a 250gb harddrive you get more like 230gb available. is there a reason for this or is it just manufacturers round it up?

its not that its particulaly bothering me, i was just curious and thought this would be the best place to ask, i tried googling it and had no luck finding an answer

EMP7Y

Edit: I'm wrong... using the internets to gain more knowledge as we speak. Will report back

Edit 2: It's the difference between the decimal and binary numbering systems

http://www.popularmechanics.com/how_...y/4206535.html

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/9716

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G|F.E.A.D|Killa

wrong, us as consumers consider a giga byte 1024mb, while manufacturers consider a gigabyte 1000mb. it goes much smaller then this i just didnt want to start at bits and bytes. its like 1000 bits to our 1024 bits. so every byte, we lose 24 bits. i believe.

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I heard Ford is coming out with heated bumpers in 2010 so your hands don not get cold while pushing it.

urgrandpasdog

It has to do with the differences in how manufacturers "measure" the size of the drive, as well as a certain amount of space that is lost due to things like formatting.

FREELINE57

I don't know the exact terms, but its because computer data is bits and bytes it is rounded off. I'm sure another member will come along and be much more helpfull.

Dam, I type slowly!

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FatalityxZ

Yep. We see 1gb as 1024mb, they see it as 1000. Cheapos. My 500GB external came with around 470.

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G|F.E.A.D|Killa

http://codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=27492

my 1TB came up 70gbs short lol

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I heard Ford is coming out with heated bumpers in 2010 so your hands don not get cold while pushing it.

mmx+

HDD (and flash drive manufacturers) report a gigabyte as 1 billion bytes. A computer reports it as 2^32 bytes, so a "500GB" drive is really only about 465GB

G|F.E.A.D|Killa

correct, your only a few minutes late

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I heard Ford is coming out with heated bumpers in 2010 so your hands don not get cold while pushing it.

eflyguy

It's been answered but just for kicks, I did some math..
In decimal we have
1000 - k, or kilo
1000^2 - M, or mega
1000^3 - G, or giga
1000^4 - T, or tera
.. but in Binary it's:
1024
1024^2
1024^3
1024^4
.. and so on.

The difference is significant between the decimal and binary versions. The IEC tried to clarify this by proposing the binary values use kibi, mebi, gibi and tebi, with the prefixes Ki, Mi, Gi and Ti respectively, in 1996. This was rejected by IEEE as long as the actual "usage was explicitly pointed out".

Difference between 1000^3 and 1024^3 is (1,073,741,824 - 1,000,000,000) 73,741,824, 7.4% or 73.74 million bytes that we "lose".
Difference between 1000^4 and 1024^4 is (1,099,511,627,776 - 1,000,000,000,000) 99,511,627,776, 10% or 99.5 billion bytes that we "lose".

As you can see, the difference is increasing as we go up in drive capacity. Next time (Petabyte, when we get there) it will be 12.5% or 125 TB!
..a

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