samsiam Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 I bought an acer 500 gig ehd the other day and plugged it in and it only had 465 gig on it.....what happened to the other 35 ?? There was about 200mb of files and an acer organising thingy...but that it ?? Is this the norm ?? A scam ?? a ripoff ?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_boo Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 (edited) Sigh....this really should be a sticky. HDD manufacturers measure using SI decimal units. I.E. one gigabyte is 109 bytes (1 000 000 000). Windows, and their filesystem, uses the 'gigibytes' which defines a gigabyte as 230 (10243 or 1073741824). Obviously since the rational way of figuring it is smaller than Window's way, you lose ~7% space per gigabyte. 93% x 500=465. Is this right or wrong? You're talking hardware and software. Using common sense it would seem to be that sticking with 10x is a great way to define physical properties. Using base2 for defining software makes sense since that is what they use. Edited June 1, 2012 by dave_boo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJCM Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 (edited) Edited June 1, 2012 by MJCM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samsiam Posted June 1, 2012 Author Share Posted June 1, 2012 Thanks. But thing is...I still thought I was buying 500gig......just not fair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_boo Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 You did buy 500GB of space. There are things you can do to utilise it, but then you lose your broad compatability...plus you would have to use an OS that you wouldn't like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aarn Posted June 2, 2012 Share Posted June 2, 2012 Yes, 8Gb usb sticks are really only 7.4Gb. If you are using windows, you can compress your data to store more stuff on your [465Gb} HD. Connect your HD, click 'Explorer' (usually second button from left in lower panel), R-click on your HD, L-click on 'Properties', then tick the box that says 'Compress this drive to save disk space', AA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samsiam Posted June 2, 2012 Author Share Posted June 2, 2012 Thanks...shall give a go. They should advertise them as 465gig ehd's then really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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