hard drive memory

hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it was
advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box
--
martyb

The rest is overhead for the drive. 465 would be the available for data.
There is a great deal of overhead to get you to your data quickly.

"marty" <> wrote in message
news:6502BAE5-C6FE-4FFF-91B7-...
> hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
> was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it
> was
> advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
> only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box
> --
> martyb

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:55:02 -0800, marty
<> wrote:

> hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
> was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it was
> advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
> only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box


I agree with you that that's what it should have had on the box,
because 465GB is what it actually is.

All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to
the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 500 billion byte drive is
actually a little over 465GB.

Some people point out that the official international standard defines
the "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct though they
are, using the binary value of GB is so well established in the
computer world that I consider using the decimal value of a billion to
be deceptive marketing.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:06:06 -0800, "John Barnes"
<> wrote:

> The rest is overhead for the drive. 465 would be the available for data.
> There is a great deal of overhead to get you to your data quickly.


No, it's not a matter of overhead, it's matter of the definition of
what a gigabyte is. See the message I just sent to this thread.



> "marty" <> wrote in message
> news:6502BAE5-C6FE-4FFF-91B7-...
> > hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
> > was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it
> > was
> > advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
> > only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box
> > --
> > martyb

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

Its being covered many times just google

"marty" <> wrote in message
news:6502BAE5-C6FE-4FFF-91B7-...
> hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
> was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it
> was
> advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
> only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box
> --
> martyb

thanks john for the reply ,as long as there is a reason for this i am happy i
asume that the bigger the hard drive the bigger the overhead
--
martyb


"John Barnes" wrote:

> The rest is overhead for the drive. 465 would be the available for data.
> There is a great deal of overhead to get you to your data quickly.
>
> "marty" <> wrote in message
> news:6502BAE5-C6FE-4FFF-91B7-...
> > hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
> > was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it
> > was
> > advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
> > only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box
> > --
> > martyb
>
>

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"marty" <> wrote in message
news:6502BAE5-C6FE-4FFF-91B7-...
> hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
> was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it
> was
> advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
> only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box
> --
> martyb

That size is correct. Your HD is advertised in decimal notation (numbers
that we're all familiar with) BUT computers understand binary notation (0 or
1).

1GB in decimal is 1,000,000,000
1GB in binary is 1,073,741,824

Therefore the actual size (read by computers) of a HD advertised as 1GB is
as follows:
1,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 0.9313GB (slightly less than 1GB)

In your case, 500GB is equal to the following:
500,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 465.66GB

So you see there's about 34.34GB "missing". The larger the HD size the
bigger the discrepancy. It isn't that big of a deal when HD size is 1GB
because there's 0.0687GB is "missing". When HD size becomes larger like
todays HDs, the difference becomes huge.

Hope that helps.

"marty" <> wrote in message
news:6502BAE5-C6FE-4FFF-91B7-...
> hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
> was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it
> was
> advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
> only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box
> --
> martyb

marty wrote:
> hi ,i have just bought a external hard drive ,every thing works okay but i
> was just wandering why it is only showing 465gb instead of the 500gb it was
> advertised as being ,i mean thats a lot of memory, 35gb missing, if it's
> only 465gb then thats what it should have on the box

This has been hashed over countless times. Basically drive manufacturers
advertise their drives in decimal gigabytes = 1,000,000,000 or 10^9.
Computer folk think of gigabytes in binary gigabytes = 1,073,741,824 or
2^30. That means that your drive will automatically show as about 93% of
what you expected. That is the 465gB you noted. Then when you format the
drive a certain amount of space is taken up for "bookkeeping" functions
which explains even more loss of storage capacity.

Oh, and for quite a while drive makers have been making fine-print
admissions about the disparity in their advertised drive capacity and the
capacity which operating systems report. Sometimes the print is so fine as
to be virtually invisible but it is always there somewhere in the
specifications.

--
John McGaw
http://johnmcgaw.com

"Ken Blake, MVP" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Some people point out that the official international standard defines
> the "G" of GB as one billion, not 1,073,741,824. Correct though they
> are, using the binary value of GB is so well established in the
> computer world that I consider using the decimal value of a billion to
> be deceptive marketing.

I wonder if there has ever been class action lawsuits filed against storage
manufacturers regarding misleading ads.