70GB of a 1TB drive unusable excessive?

[videobruce]

I have a new Samsung/Seagate ST1000DM005 1TB SATA HDD.

Two different utility programs show a usable capacity of 931GB. That's 7% of the capacity of the drive gone.
Is this normal to have this amount unusable?

 

[IGemini]

Yes, actual usable space after formatting is about 93% of the advertised size.

 

[videobruce]

Ouch, I didn't figure it was anything near that amount as I never really paid much attention to it until now.

Does it matter which file system?

 

[weez82]

the full 1tb is usable it just windows reads mb as 1024kb and the drive manufacture uses 1000kb. If that makes any sense

 

[Chapbass]

the full 1tb is usable it just windows reads mb as 1024kb and the drive manufacture uses 1000kb. If that makes any sense

This. has nothing to do with formatting, and all has to do with marketing.

to me, #1 reason why if you look on newegg for larger drives, almost none of them have an overall 5 eggs, people give them 1 egg since its not what they expected :\

 

[videobruce]

This. has nothing to do with formatting, and all has to do with marketing.

You aren't trying to imply the CEA is scamming us are you??

the full 1tb is usable it just windows reads mb as 1024kb and the drive manufacture uses 1000kb. If that makes any sense

The above quote seems to make more sense.

#1 reason why if you look on newegg for larger drives, almost none of them have an overall 5 eggs, people give them 1 egg since its not what they expected

Very interesting observation and conclusion.

 

[Mark R]

the full 1tb is usable it just windows reads mb as 1024kb and the drive manufacture uses 1000kb. If that makes any sense

More precisely, the hard drive manufacturer's report their drive sizes in TB (terabytes or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes) or GB (gigabytes or 1,000,000,000 bytes).

However a lot of drive utilities and OSs report the drive capacity in TiB (tibibytes or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes) or in GiB (gibibytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes).

This discrepancy came about, because in early days of computing, 1024 (2^10) was a nice round number - and it was conveniently close to 1000 (10^3), that they were both called "kilo" (as in kilobyte). As time went by, a lot of programmers adopted the convention of MB meaning 2^20 (1,048,576 bytes), GB meaning 2^30 and TB meaning 2^40 bytes. However, each step led to the discrepancy increasing - so that there is a whole 7% difference between 1 GB and 1 GiB, and 10% difference between 1 TB and 1 TiB.

While the programmers, and RAM manufacturers liked this shortcut. It never really caught on in the magnetic storage world - after all, magnetic tape could be cut to any length, and later magnetic disks worked on the same principle.

However, by 1999, the confusion was getting ridiculous, and a number of international standards groups came up with a new naming system for the binary units.

Most up-to-date Linux distros measures the drives in GiB/TiB units, and labels the units as GiB/TiB.

Mac OS X measures in GB/TB and labels the units as GB/TB.

Windows (and most disk utiltities) uses GiB/TiB but labels them GB/TB leading to massive confusion.

 

[Concillian]

1 byte * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = 1 Terabyte
^ How drive companies label drives

1 byte * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1.073 Terabytes
^ How Microsoft reports available space

As noted in the previous post, if MS labeled their units properly, it might cut down on some of the confusion. Microsoft measures in TiB and labels it TB. ( or GiB / GB)

 

[videobruce]

As noted in the previous post, if MS labeled their units properly, it might cut down on some of the confusion. Microsoft measures in TiB and labels it TB. ( or GiB / GB)

Problem summed up and of course the manufactures use the figure that makes them look the best.

 

[Ben90]

The problem gets worse as we move up the scale:

 

[videobruce]

I know "tera", I have heard of "peta", but zetta & yotta???
Sheesh. Are those the next size HDD's or is that the amount of memory the next M$ O/S will need?

Does formatting a given HDD using ext2 or 3 make any difference as far as usable space after formatting?

 

[TheVrolok]

...

You, sir, have won this thread.

 

[videobruce]

????

 

[alaricljs]

Does formatting a given HDD using ext2 or 3 make any difference as far as usable space after formatting?

ext3/4 will use a little more space for the formatting in the form of the journal.

It's not that much tho.

 

[philipma1957]

I have a new Samsung/Seagate ST1000DM005 1TB SATA HDD.

Two different utility programs show a usable capacity of 931GB. That's 7% of the capacity of the drive gone.
Is this normal to have this amount unusable?

You are a 11 year member on this site. This question is about 4 years out of date. So why are you asking it now? Instead of 2008. This issue has had
lawsuits class action suits etc.

 

[bryanW1995]

Just because he's been at AT for 11 years doesn't mean that he's been hanging out in the memory/storage forum for that entire time. And the obvious answer to your question is "Because he didn't know/care about it in 2008".

 

[philipma1957]

Just because he's been at AT for 11 years doesn't mean that he's been hanging out in the memory/storage forum for that entire time. And the obvious answer to your question is "Because he didn't know/care about it in 2008".

I was hoping he had more then the obvious for an answer. Posting an online question about a question can be difficult at times it comes across nasty.

I was curious as to op's motives and or reason's for asking the question. I suppose my post read too mean or too prying to some. If he was a first time poster I would have considered the post a shot at trolling. Since he had made 700 plus posts in 11 years I wondered why he asked. I would have figured he has come across the short number issue time and time again.

When I read my post over I could see that it could be read that I was accusing him or judging him in a negative way.

My Apologies . Phil

 

[Rvenger]

My 1.5tb drive has 1.3tb avail.

 

[RaistlinZ]

I have a new Samsung/Seagate ST1000DM005 1TB SATA HDD.

Two different utility programs show a usable capacity of 931GB. That's 7% of the capacity of the drive gone.
Is this normal to have this amount unusable?

I have a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB and have 931 useable as well. It's normal.

 

[videobruce]

You are a 11 year member on this site.

Two reasons; The last time I re-built my PC's was 2006 and I don't follow developments in the PC industry until I'm thinking about upgrading again. Also it's my 1st 1TB drive and the discrepancy seemed greater than usual.

I also have other interests that don't require 24/7 attention to all the changes in this industry.

 

[philipma1957]

Two reasons; The last time I re-built my PC's was 2006 and I don't follow developments in the PC industry until I'm thinking about upgrading again. Also it's my 1st 1TB drive and the discrepancy seemed greater than usual.

I also have other interests that don't require 24/7 attention to all the changes in this industry.

Thank you for the reply.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

What pisses me off is that now that memory companies are making SSD drives, even though since the dawn of computer memory they have rated RAM correctly, now that they are making drives, they are screwing us by labeling drives using the traditional HDD marketing BS.

 

[mv2devnull]

While marketing may very well be BS, SI prefixes are not. The history of both binary and SI prefixes is several decades old and there is no "correct", just various conventions and plenty of misuse.

 

[frostedflakes]

My old 60GB Vertex actually had 60GiB usable.

But yeah most SSDs use the same convention as HDDs for advertised capacity. A 64GB SSD, for example, actually has 64GiB of flash on it, but about 7% is typically reserved for overprovisioning in consumer drives (SandForce being the exception, they have more), so you end up with a usable capacity that's closer to 60GiB.

 

[her209]

1TB = 1,000,000,000,000 Bytes

1,000,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 ~ 931.32 GB