1TB or 931 GB?

[SilenceOfComp]

Ok, so i thought I knew how the drives worked as far as the loss of data due to format... but i guess i am wrong, you see, I thought that what type of file system you had determained how much storage space you lost....

I bought a external 1TB WD My Book and when i plugged it in it installed and told me 931GB on FAT32, so i figured that the drive, once i formatted with ntfs that i would get more gbs of storage.. Am I doing something wrong or am I mistaken b/c I formated NTFS, and 931 GBs again.. someone please explain.

v/r Silence...

 

[SNGX1275]

Yep you are wrong. Thats perfectly normal. See this thread: https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic127232.html

I'll quote my important part.

Its actually 1GB=1,000,000,000bytes according to the manufacturer. ..



From Seagate Barracuda data sheet "1 One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one trillion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity."

From Western Digital Specifications for Caviar Black HDs "As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, megabit per second (Mb/s) = one million bits per second, and gigabit per second (Gb/s) = one billion bits per second."

From Hitachi Deskstar data sheet: " One GB is equal to one billion bytes and one TB equals 1,000GB (one trillion bytes) when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity
may be less."

From Samsung Spinpoint hard drives page: "1MB = 1,000,000bytes / 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes.
Actual accessible capacity may vary from advertised capacity due to formatting and
partitioning of the hard drive, as well as due to your computer's operating system"

From Fujitsu enterprise hard drives page: "1 One gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes; accessible capacity will be less and actual capacity depends on the operating environment and formatting.
One megabyte (MB) = 1,000,000 bytes; One gigabyte (GB) = 1,000 megabytes; Gigabit (Gb) = 1,000 megabits; RPM = Revolutions Per Minute
2 A small portion of buffer memory is used for drive firmware control"

Start with the full amount of bytes, then start dividing by 1024, eventually you'll end up very close to your 931.

 

[SilenceOfComp]

So the NTFS file system allows for the best use of the gigabytes of storage correct?

 

[SNGX1275]

I don't think it makes much if any difference. 931 is a normal value to expect though. Take a look at my screen shot.

If you do the math, you'll end up with 931.5. (divide by 1024 3x, 1 for giga, mega, kilo). I think the FS overhead is a carryover from back when drives were only a few megabytes in size and that it doesn't matter anymore because its such a small percentage of the overall capacity of the drive.

 

[vanguardfox]

haha, imagine: what!? did i delete 69.5 Gb of capacity?

 

[SilenceOfComp]

haha, imagine: what!? did i delete 69.5 Gb of capacity?

I didn't think that I deleted it, I just thought that the file system determained how much you lost... like instead of 1024kb/1mb that it would be 1014kb/1mb, but then again I was wrong, which is why i asked..

I havn't been to school for this stuff in like 8 years.. so... yeah lol

 

[vanguardfox]

i didn't mean to insult you dude. sorry if i did. i was just trying bring some comedy to the situation.

__________________________________________________
Wargames 2.0 is a turn-based strategy game
click the following link for a bonus when starting the game:
http://www.wargames2.net/GameIndex.aspx?RefID=58000
If you do not want a bonus, click the follwing link:
http://www.wargames2.net

 

[LookinAround]

So the NTFS file system allows for the best use of the gigabytes of storage correct?

You're likely thinking in terms of "disk overhead", i.e. how much a filesystem reserves for its own private use.

While i don't know how much NTFS vs. FAT32 require in overhead, that's not what's important. What's important is NTFS is a far more robust filesystem then FAT32. Regardless of which one might use more for "system overhead" fact is, that NTFS is generally preferred. (except in some cases where a disk while be shared.)
=> All computers can read NTFS filesystems
=> It's game players, and other end user consumer products that sometimes require FAT

So use NTFS UNLESS you need to share the drive with something requiring FAT

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

To add to LookinAround's excellent post above, FAT also limits you to a maximum file size of 4GB. NTFS has a max file size of approximately 16TB in comparison.