Why a hard drive or a flash drive has less storage space than promised?
I
bought a hard
drive with 500 GB capacity,
but I see just 465 GB, why?????????
The answer is simple.
A manufacturer considers 1 Megabyte to be 1000 , 1 Gigabyte to be 1000 Megabytes, 1 Terabyte
to be 1000 Gigabytes and so on. This is correct considering that kilo means
1000 and mega means 1000000 (10^6). However, computers calculate on base 2
and to them, 1 MB is actually 1024 kilobytes, 1GB is 1024MB and 1 TB is 1024GB.
This difference in the method of computation is responsible for this
"missing space."
Example:
From a manufacturer's point of view, the 500GB will have 500*1000*1000*1000
= 500000000000 bytes.
From a computer's point of view, 500GB is actually 500*1024*1024*1024
= 536870912000 bytes.
Look at the table and see how much space is "lost"
due to computers working on a base 2 system
Space Promised
|
Displayed on a computer
|
Difference
|
100GB
|
93.13GB
|
6.87GB
|
250GB
|
232.83GB
|
17.17GB
|
500GB
|
465.66GB
|
34.34GB
|
1TB
|
931.32GB
|
92.68GB
|
2TB
|
1862.64GB
|
185.36GB
|
So, they are not marketing
it falsely at all.
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