DIGIT-ARC read-only archive · snapshot: July 23, 2026

HDD showing less space!!

11 posts · originally from https://geek.digit.in/community/threads/hdd-showing-less-space.36392/

aditya1987
aditya1987 Original post #1
Sep 14, 2006 at 4:55 PM
Hello friends.

I have recently bought 160 GB seagate sata HDD. But after formatting it is showing only 149 GB, not 160 GB. Where has another 11 GB gone :-(

Please help me!!!!!!!
Ambar
Ambar #2
Sep 14, 2006 at 5:07 PM
dude the HDD actually has capacity of 149 GB u can easily see wid other drives also...like samsung 80 GB has around 75 BG free space...so no prob wid the drive..
P
Sep 14, 2006 at 8:00 PM
oh gos , 11 GB is too much , get ur HDD checkeed with ur dealer frm where u purchased ur HDD
wizrulz
wizrulz #4
Sep 14, 2006 at 8:24 PM
paul_007 said:
oh gos , 11 GB is too much , get ur HDD checkeed with ur dealer frm where u purchased ur HDD

No problem with his HDD dude.....

Hard disk companys don't see things in quite the way u do.1KB is considered equal to 1000 bytes.The actual number is 1024(which is raised to the power of 10).Now consider your 160 GB hdd is equivalent to 160,000,000,000 bytes according to the hard drive.The OS calculates the capacity using 1024 (correct binary calculation).Therefore, if u thke 160,000,000,000 bytes and divide that by 1024, the answeris 156250000KB.Divide by 1024 again to get 152587.890625MB.Divide this by 1024 and u get 149.0116GB..Its just that the hard drive companys round off 1024 to 1000 (which is not an accurate way of displaying the capacity of the drive)
SO stay calm and no need to panic........
A
akshayt #5
Sep 14, 2006 at 9:09 PM
160GB real = 160 X 1024 MB

160GB of company = 160 X 1000 MB = 160 X 1000 / 1024 GB = approx 156 GB

anyway even mine is around 148 GB
Ankur Gupta
Sep 14, 2006 at 9:26 PM
My 250GB SATA 233 GB of Formatted space.
Its perfectly fine as manufactures make calculations as mentioned above by wizrulz.
A
Sep 14, 2006 at 9:30 PM
wizrulz said:
No problem with his HDD dude.....

Hard disk companys don't see things in quite the way u do.1KB is considered equal to 1000 bytes.The actual number is 1024(which is raised to the power of 10).Now consider your 160 GB hdd is equivalent to 160,000,000,000 bytes according to the hard drive.The OS calculates the capacity using 1024 (correct binary calculation).Therefore, if u thke 160,000,000,000 bytes and divide that by 1024, the answeris 156250000KB.Divide by 1024 again to get 152587.890625MB.Divide this by 1024 and u get 149.0116GB..Its just that the hard drive companys round off 1024 to 1000 (which is not an accurate way of displaying the capacity of the drive)
SO stay calm and no need to panic........

Great explanation Dude.
Keep it up.
C
Sep 14, 2006 at 10:01 PM
Thats the same reason u dont get 256 mb of ram u get only 224mb
nice explaination dude how do u get all these
S
SE> #9
Sep 14, 2006 at 10:08 PM
The "scraping off" starts at the very low levels i.e. from Bytes to KiloBytes.
so, 160GB is therotically 1024x1024x1024x160 Bytes
whereas it is 1000x1000x1000x160 Bytes

so the actual space that you get is ( Cx1000x1000x1000 )/ (1024x1024x1024)
where C is the theoritical capacity (160 GB in your case)

so in your case it comes out to be 149.0116119384765625 GB
in case of 80 GB it comes out to be 74.50580596923828125

@cooldude: No, the loss in case of RAM is due to sharing for graphics. If it were the other way, it would have been 244.140625

Hope this helped

EDIT: sorry I didn't read wizrules explanation
aditya1987
Sep 14, 2006 at 10:58 PM
Thanks wizrulz!!

Reputation added! ;-)
Ambar
Ambar #11
Sep 16, 2006 at 8:39 PM
ya @wizrulz..is rite..kewl man..