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    Just got a brand new laptop...different HD?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by pritomd, Aug 7, 2011.

  1. pritomd

    pritomd Notebook Enthusiast

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    It's supposed to have 640GB of space, but upon inspection of "Computer", I have 552, 28.9, and 1.01, adding up to 581.91...that seems to be an awful lot less than advertised! Sure maybe there was some little bit of discrepancy, but 60GB seems pretty significant! Where is the rest?!
     
    pritomd, Aug 7, 2011
    #1
  2. Bill Nye

    Bill Nye Know Nothing

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    640GB... read the fine print. 1 GB = 1000000000 bytes, which is a bit less than an actual GB. But that's how manufacturers have advertised HDD since forever. 640000000000/1024^3=~596 real GB. Factor in formatting, and differences in electronics anyway, 582 is reasonable.
     
    Bill Nye, Aug 7, 2011
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  3. CoreEye5

    CoreEye5 Notebook Geek

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    Sigh.

    People trip over this one constantly.

    I had someone tell me that he would never use NTFS formatting for a drive again, because of the "terrible waste of space," after I mentioned that my 1 TB drive had about 931 GB usable space.

    The variations from formatting, how the OS counts it, etc. are exactly why manufacturers cite the decimal number of bytes available. They're not trying to fool anyone. They're just saying, "This is how many bytes you get, it's up to the software how much actual storage you can use."
     
    CoreEye5, Aug 8, 2011
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  4. timfountain

    timfountain Notebook Consultant

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    Yes, and let's not even get into how cluster size and native file size cause even greater waste....
     
    timfountain, Aug 19, 2011
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  5. tuηay

    tuηay o TuNaY o

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    My WD Scorpio Black should have 320 GBs. Usable is 297 GBs. You're not alone. And as CoreEye5 said, my 1TB drive have about 930 GBs usable.
     
    tuηay, Aug 20, 2011
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