Why my 320 GB HDD is only 298 GB
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Did you ever wonder that you had bought a 120 GB HDD but the computer showed it as a 111 GB HDD. And where did the rest of the space eventually disappear? Well nothing disappeared and even the manufacturer didnt make a fool of you.
This happens because there is a slight difference between the way the computer and the manufacturer calculate the HDD size.
One GB according to Computer Science Terminology
8bit = 1 Byte
1024 Bytes = 1 Kbyte
1024 KBytes=1MByte
1024 Mbytes=1GByte
One GB according to Manufacturers
8bit = 1 Byte
1000 Bytes = 1 Kbyte
1000 KBytes=1MByte
1000 Mbytes=1GByte
A we see that greater the hard drive size the larger is the number of missing GBs…
| Theoretical Value | Practically what we get |
| 1 GB | 0.931 GB |
| 10 GB | 9.31 GB |
| 20 GB | 18.62 GB |
| 40 GB | 37.25 GB |
| 80 GB | 74.50 GB |
| 120 GB | 111.75 GB |
| 160 GB | 149.01 GB |
| 250 GB | 232.83 GB |
| 320 GB | 298.02 GB |
| 500 GB | 465.66 GB |
The manufacturers state that they call one GB as 109 and not 1024x1024x1024
@mtaram .. does this happen on Linux platform too? I was under the impression that this happens only on the Windows platform.
This is due to the difference between the way computer and manufacturers calculate the HDD space… It has nothing to do with the os.
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