[Tori]

I have a 320gb hard drive but when I look in My Computer, I see that it says Local Disk (C

223gb free of 297gb.

I have a few questions:

1. Why doesn't it say 320gb?
2. It says I have 74gb free, but my Windows folder is 18.3gb, Program Files totals 28gb, and everything else added together gets me about 49gb total. Where is the remaining 25gb?

Thanks

 

[TwoCables]

I think it's combined between the Paging File and the Hibernation File.

I don't remember how to explain why it doesn't say 320, but I think that it's normal.

 

[jellis142]

HDD's will never show their "true" capacity through formatting. I can't remember how to explain it either, but a clean drive isn't ready to accept date until it's been formatted to a certain file system.

Windows hides a lot

Hibernation, Page File, Temporary, etc.

 

[alchemik]

the 320gb thing is like that for all sizes, you never actually get what they say, the higher you go up in size the more you lose, looking for link that describes this better

edit:: found this

Many people ask why their hard drive is not as big as it should be when they check in Windows. The simple answer is that the hard drive manufacturers quote the size of a gigabyte as less than that quoted by Windows. Usually the prefix "giga" means 109, or 1,000,000,000; so a gigawatt of energy is 1,000,000,000 watts (that's a lot of light bulbs). This is the method that hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers quote to give you the size of their hard drives.

So basically a GB is 1024 MB but the way they make hdd is by just going with 1000MB = 1Gb same goes for all sizes so 1000KB = 1MB thus losing space

 

[AMDPhenomX4]

1000 vs 1024.
HDD Manufacturer 1KB=1000 byte. Windows 1KB=1024 Byte.
320*(1000/1024)=312.5GB-Windows.
alchemik beat me using an edit...

 

[alchemik]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AMDPhenomX4 1000 vs 1024. HDD Manufacturer 1KB=1000 byte. Windows 1KB=1024 Byte. 320*(1000/1024)=312.5GB-Windows. alchemik beat me using an edit...

Muahaha

i found the link right after posting

 

[Cavi Mike]

There was a class-action lawsuit over this. Back-in-the-day you didn't really notice that loss of 24 bytes. With [email protected]$$ drives, it's very apparent and people got pretty pissed off.

 

[tasospaok123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AMDPhenomX4 1000 vs 1024. HDD Manufacturer 1KB=1000 byte. Windows 1KB=1024 Byte. 320*(1000/1024)=312.5GB-Windows. alchemik beat me using an edit...

It's because HDD Manufacturers use Decimal system whereas Windows uses Binary.

 

[sbuck333]

as others have said, formatting, paging file, and hibernation file are probably to blame. Recently I used a program called WinDirStat to visualize my data and clear stuff up. It really helped me out. In case you're interested : http://windirstat.info/

 

[LiNERROR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tori I have a 320gb hard drive but when I look in My Computer, I see that it says Local Disk (C 223gb free of 297gb. I have a few questions: 1. Why doesn't it say 320gb? 2. It says I have 74gb free, but my Windows folder is 18.3gb, Program Files totals 28gb, and everything else added together gets me about 49gb total. Where is the remaining 25gb? Thanks

hard drives are rated in decimal bytes ie 1000 bytes equals a Kilobyte...
file systems are rated in binary bytes ie 1024 byes equals a Kilobyte...

Would you like to know more?

your pagefile is normally 1-1.5 times your ram...
your hibernate file is normally a little less than your ram...

there is also extra space taken up by your shadow copies and restore points not to mention you can't "see" everything on the drive with the default settings so there are a bunch of system and hidden files that you don't even see normally...