Comments for Why isn't there 80 gigabytes of free space on my empty 80 gigabyte drive?

Comment from Mark on 2010-11-17

2010-11-18T01:22:32Z

It's certainly one of the things that puzzles new computer users. A 500 GB Seagate drive I recently installed reported 465 GB of space. It's perfectly normal.

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Comment from ron on 2010-11-16

2010-11-17T02:27:38Z

You've touched on one of my pet peeves.

Sure, back in the "old' days, my $5000 386 included upgrades. All the way up to 80mb and 2mb of RAM. Back then there were a couple of things going on. Many vendors sold drives unformatted, so when you formatted the drive a lot of space evaporated. Other vendors would sell formatted drives that actually had a little more space than advertised because they expected sectors to go bad. And in those days, losing a sector was a significant bite out of the total drive size. So they hedged to keep customers happy.

The binary reporting in the OS was based on optimizing performance when CP speeds were measured in Khz and memory in 100's of bytes. The CPU and the RAM was binary, so it was "easier" for the computer to report in powers of 2. Conversion to decimal was "cpu expensive". But now when even "granny" has GHZ sitting idle on her desk I think it is time for the industry to convert to measure that is "normal" for "average" user. That is counting in decimal rather than binary. Powerful computers are now commodity items that are being marketed to "average people". Computing has grown way beyond geeks who count in binary and hex and who could read core dumps. Mom, Pop and grannies now use them on a daily basis.

My concern about the binary / decimal divide is the scale it is reaching. Sure 24 bytes isn't much in 1000 bytes, but since you are dealing with powers of 2 the gap keeps on getting bigger. That 1 TB (decimal) drive only has 931 GB reported in the OS. That "lost" 70 GB is a significant difference. It won't be all that many years when the home theatre server will be measured in petabytes.

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Comment from Feliciano on 2010-11-07

2010-11-07T18:19:44Z

@Steve: Leo's math is correct, and so is his logic.

You're right, 'kilo' means 1000, etc.

But in computer terms, (and if you read his post carefully you'll find out), 'kilobyte' doesn't mean 1000 bytes, it means 1024, even though they use the prefix 'kilo'.

So when he says we humans says 'kilobyte' to mean 'around 1000 bytes', he's right - because 1024 bytes is very close to 1000, so in layman's language, we round it off to 1000 to make it easier for us to understand. But to a computer, a kilobyte is 1024 bytes. And a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes.

So if you have a computer that says '80GB' on the box, realize that this is 'human talk', so that companies can make it appear that they're giving away more memory than they actually are. In 'human talk', that's 80,000,000,000 bytes they're giving away. Which is correct. Want to find our how much you'll ACTUALLY get when the computer uses the disk?
Simply divide 80,000,000,000 by 1,073,741,824, and you'll get the result = 74,5 GB, which is exactly how much the computer reports.

The reason you see less memory is NOT due to the operating system, as you stated. The above happens even if the disk is completely clean and has no operating system on it whatsoever (I know because I have one hard disk with no OS on it.)

The reason your old computers reported the exact amount of memory that was available to the computer, was because in THOSE DAYS (80's), the manufacturers used 1024 bytes to mean a kilobyte. Later when they started selling 8GB drives upward, they started using the 'layman's' definition of KB, GB etc.

Geddit?

Nice explanation. My thinking is that they started using layman's definitions for KB, GB and so on when they started selling to the general public and not just computer folks. Not only does "1024" not make sense to the average person, it's also a marketing advantage to describe something in a way to give the biggest perception of capacity possible. Even if 80GB is really 74.5. There's actually been new terminology devised - the kibibyte, for example - which is all based on powers of 10. While well meaning, the last thing the layman needs is more confusing terminology (which I expect the marketing folk to ignore anyway :-).

08-Nov-2010

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Comment from Steve on 2010-09-15

2010-09-15T19:04:59Z

Someone said - "We think of a kilobyte as "around" 1,000 bytes. Close. Close enough for most conversations. But when we think of a megabyte as "around" 1,000,000 bytes, and a gigabyte as "around" 1,000,000,000 bytes, we're getting less and less accurate at each step along the way"

Umm
Kilo means exactly 1 thousand (not around)
MEGA means exactly 1 million (not around)
Giga means exactly 1 billion (not around)

Your math is spot on old bean, but how YOU think is wrong. and yes the companies sell you an 80 gb hard drive with only 7.6 gb usable ( by you) because the rest is used my your operating system.

When i had my old 486 Dx 33 ( loooong time ago) I had a 260 mb hard drive ( that was huge back then) Dos and windows 3.1)reported exactly 260 mb. it wasn't until the advent of Windows 95+ did the operating system hog space for it self.

So yes you ARE getting an 80gb hard drive, but your Operating system gets dibs on the other gigs. so windows is correct in telling you that you have 7.6gb of space. thats the space left over AFTER windows hogs what it wants.

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Comment from Roger Wheat on 2010-06-11

2010-06-11T18:57:18Z

My recovery C Drive say It only has 45KB left. Is there any way I can add more memory to it? I have a Dell with window Vista.

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Comment from kayhills on 2010-03-13

2010-03-13T12:04:37Z

I recently bought a 160 GB notebook. Lately, device manager shows total hard disk size to be 149 GB (adding free space and used space) Where did 11 gb go because at first, it was reporting a total of 160 gb? I would appreciate any info.

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Comment from Richard FDisk on 2009-03-11

2009-03-12T01:04:50Z

it all started way back in the "DOS Days"
I have 2 Quantum 80MB disks, yes I did Say MB from 1988 and both of them have 83.8MB of usable space after formatting with DOS, I also have 2 Samsung 250MB disks and both of them have 262MB of usable space after formatting with DOS, you always got more space up until after the 8GB disks, then everything after that was calculated the other way and sold by the other number
ie if those 80MB disks were being sold today then they would be sold as 83MB disks not 80MB's,
what happened is greed took over, instead of selling you a 74GB disk and getting 80GB of usable space they sell it to you as an 80GB and windows reports it as 74GB and you get almost exactly 80,000,000,000 bytes.
just like the "320GB" disks which are actually 298GB with almost 320,000,000,000 usable bytes

Cheers, Leo Thanks for keeping us all informed with PC info

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Comment from Steve on 2009-02-27

2009-02-27T23:45:40Z

I'm Very formilier with windows, However I recently performed a complete reformat of my hard drive because of a shell error that I was unable to fix. I have not connected to the internet or added any files, apps. folders and so on. And I had the same problem befor the reformat. my hard disc is(74G) with a system allocation of 10G and 2G allocated as virtual space. Why do the drive propertys report about 2G less every time I boot up? Now there is less than 10G without adding a single bit. I tried compressing the drive and it freed up a few gigs but it soon began to slowley dwindle. I have a Hunch there is just an error in how the OS calculates free space and reports it. Strangly the free space will get down to 500mb or so and then jump back up to 2.5 or so gigs. What the crap?

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Comment from Adarious on 2008-04-11

2008-04-11T08:42:11Z

"We have just bought an 80Gb Dell Inspiron laptop. The disk properties states total 69Gb, which it says is 74,***,***. I could understand if it said 80,***,*** was 74Gb, but how can 80Gb capacity be claimed for our drive which is 11Gb short?"

Most Dell computer systems have a portion of the disk sectioned off..called a partition. They do this because they usually put system restore files in it, which include drivers and sometimes the OS as a cd/dvd image. So part of that space is likely that. The rest is likely taken up by Windows and windows related files ... and possibly by any pre-installed software/drivers.

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Comment from manish on 2006-11-03

2006-11-03T10:46:23Z

could you pls tell that when i delete any file and even remove it from recycle bin.....then using system restore ..i am able to bring it back...how does it work...are the files not deleted in reality?

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Comment from Nikki on 2006-10-31

2006-11-01T05:14:31Z

My computer has been messing up lately. Sometimes the internet would work and sometimes it won't. What is wrong with my computer? Also, my new computer (less then 6 months)started with 232 GB free space on my hard drive and some things have been downloaded but not much. These things that have been download have taken about 30 GB of free space on my hard drive. One day after i was finished using my computer i checked the free space and it had 202 GB of free space on my hard drive left. When i logged back on my computer the next day the free space on my hard drive was 70.5 Gb. How is this possible? Also what does System restore do? (Start, all programs, accessories, system tools then system restore) I have done this before and it loaded my info and all but the programs that i installed before the date selected. Does this take a large amount free space off my hard drive because when my computer shut down again i tried to restore it to an earlier date and it took hours to restore it, sometimes it just stops trying to restore my previous works, it says "needs more virtual memory". Please help. My computer is being stupid.

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Comment from Leo Notenboom on 2006-08-15

2006-08-16T02:05:22Z

Well, for one thing, defragging does not free up disk space. That's not what it's for.

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Comment from heliodude on 2006-08-15

2006-08-16T01:36:20Z

what i would like to know is why would windows xp say theres 1 mb or so of free space when i defragged the crap out of it and transferred all the big programs and files to my other drive?

it don't make sense

Alan
http://www.helio.com

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Comment from Matt on 2006-05-27

2006-05-27T11:28:38Z

Thank you for the explanation Leo. I was also stumped to where my extra GB's had disappeared to.

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Comment from mifrah on 2006-04-21

2006-04-22T05:25:17Z

why there is no free space for me??i need extra space for my mail boxwhich is only 2MB. i need fast. do kindly give me free space or help me. thankyou for your co-operation

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Comment from ricky on 2006-04-20

2006-04-20T09:07:35Z

as i know... we define giga as 1000M, mega as 1000k and kilo as 1000
but pc define giga as 1024M, mega as 1024k and kilo as 1024

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Comment from Michael Fletcher on 2006-01-23

2006-01-23T16:58:33Z

We have just bought an 80Gb Dell Inspiron laptop. The disk properties states total 69Gb, which it says is 74,***,***. I could understand if it said 80,***,*** was 74Gb, but how can 80Gb capacity be claimed for our drive which is 11Gb short?

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Comment from Tom Barrister on 2006-01-21

2006-01-21T22:44:15Z

The 130gb limitation is due to lba limitations. Go here for help: http://www.48bitlba.com/

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Comment from Leo on 2006-01-09

2006-01-10T00:12:58Z

How did you "remove" them? Try emptying the recycle bin.

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Comment from toufeeq on 2006-01-09

2006-01-09T16:13:56Z

i put some gb size files in all of my drives but when i remove them there is no change in the space.instead of having 18.5 gb free i have only 1.8 gb free.please help.

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Comment from Leo on 2005-11-15

2005-11-16T04:17:37Z

130 seems a big short. I'd be suspicious that there was another partition on the drive eating up some space. Does XP's disk manager show only a single partition?

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Comment from andrew on 2005-11-14

2005-11-14T10:48:03Z

Hi Leo, a great explanation thank you!

I am installing a new '160'GiG harddrive (system drive) and prior to formatting the drive it only has an indicated capacity of 130 GiG....

Does that sound about right for a drive rated at 160 GiG?

Is this a predicted "after formatting" capacity?

It seems like a large a discrepancy!

NB/ figures gained from windows XP setup disc.

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Comment from Betty on 2005-03-22

2005-03-22T14:19:46Z

Very nice explanation of a concept my hardware students have difficulty with.

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Comment from Richard on 2005-03-14

2005-03-15T07:59:09Z

I would also like to point out that the File system or File allocation table (NTFS / FAT /FAT32 etc) also taked up a large amount of disk space. Different file systems take up different amounts of space, file systems vary according to their purpose. The bigger the hard drive, the move space is required for these file systems.

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