HDD Capacity

You are growing forgetful...you are growing forgetful...you are growing forgetful...and sleepy, too...

--Svengali

The memory on someone's computer is inversely proportional to the memory in his brain.

--Tornado's Law of Mnemonic Conservation

You can try to have it your way, but you will lose. How sad.

Could you please translate that into properly composed and understandable language?

Don't be so arrogant, you haven't paid any of us for the help you need, nor for the humor which appears to be going right over your head........

Cool down and be friendly.

And what did you use to read that capacity?

Bravo88 is correct, but to clarify, your hard drive is partitioned and the difference between what is stated and what you see is that partition that is used to control the hard drive. Drew K

In addition there maybe a partition with an image of the OS and any software installed by the manufacture. That provides a one key reboot of the system to it's original purchased state. And I don't think that any manufacturer has been able to mass produce them with every sector readable. So there is some minor loss from designed capacity.

GA

You can check ozzb's suggestion. Bearing in mind the other things like the File Allocation Table and other stuff already mentioned, is the "missing" space approximately equal in size to the installed software?

Let me make a tangible real world analogy for you that explains what has happened. You buy a wooden file cabinet with an outer dimension of 3 cubic meters (1*1.5*2). You measure the available storage space and you find that only 2.75 cubic meters of storage is available for your files. You ask the manufacturer of the file cabinet why you lost 0.25 cubic meters of space on the phone. They just giggle and hang up. You next go to the carpenter's guild hall and ask them where your space went. The first guy you meet decides that he's tired of answering stupid questions for free and tries to console you with a simple joke. Instead of seeing the humour you are insulted that you were not given a straight answer to your question. Pity.

Because the real answer where your missing space went is that it went inside the Tardis. That's why its the only thing known to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It takes all the little bits of space missing from other objects to make more room.

It means you have 580GB of useable storgae on your HDD. What's so hard to understand?

Go read this and u will know how much you know.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245851-32-hard-disk-label-actual-capacity-difference-excessive

I fail to see how your linked site supports you. It says the same things being said here.

Especially the comment: "So just make sure you are informed and know what you will be getting."

Do you know the earth is, more or less, a sphere?

....and why is that too small?

Because the physical capacity (what is always advertised) and the formatted capacity are NEVER the same for the reasons I will not repeat because they were explained so well previously.

One other thing nobody touched on that is very common since vendors stoped shipping disks. Recovery partition. With the reinstall image located on it to restore the machine to the as shipped state.

It is sometimes Hidden, but there in many machines.

Besides partitioning and operating system (windows takes a fair chunk), you have to take into account the installed software; some times theyr'e "utilities" you'll never use.

And talking about Windows, it doesn't only take up a lot of space on your hard drive, but it does also consume a whole bunch of your machine resources and slows down applications, which is worsened by software manufacturers who write everything for windows and sacrifice speed and performance for a cute stupid interface with 3D icons and whistles.

I'm sure the veterans remember how fast and efficient was to automate using DOS based software.

Don't feel they robbed you, all the media space is in there, it is just deceitfuly advertised.

I know, even an asterisk directing you to pretty damn small letters at the bottompage would be appreciated, but...

Some space is used for your recovery partition, some is used by windows itself and your programs, what remains is reported in gibIbytes by windows (1024*1024*1024 bytes), whereas hardware manufacturers quote their drive sizes in gigAbytes (1000x1000x1000 bytes) to make their drives sound bigger.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

See the link below. It suggests that both windows and HDD manufacturers are "correct" based on the different definitions of GB in different standards. Looks like this is the major reason for the difference in HDD capacity; the other reasons mentioned (FAT e.t.c) are equally valid but secondary.

http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/hddsize.php

First off, that article assumes Windows from the get-go.

Secondly, the article immediately delves into the binary description of data blocks.

Therefore, the other reasons mentioned (FAT, etc.) are actually primarily responsible since the formatting of the drive and resultant "reduction" of disk space takes place before the operating system (OS: i.e., Windows) is even loaded.

The block size on the disk is ultimately responsible for the disk space used. that is decided by the formatting of the drive (FAT, NTFS, HSFS, etc). As I stated before, if a hexadecimal formatting scheme is undertaken versus an octal scheme (data block "bytes") then drive space would be gained. Increasing the data block size decreases the amount of formatting needed.

The difference is that the larger number is unformatted space. The final or lower value is formatted space. Formatting the HDD takes up space.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

I'll give you the GA due to accurate information. The usable size is directly related to the type of formatting performed on the drive. The table you provided explains why actual data is using the space by showing the binary multiples rule.

If you formatted the drive with an OS which used hexadecimal data storage you would recover more space. Longer word length would require less formatting. It all adds up, especially with today's drive sizes.

As the formatting algorithms changed over the years a standard format was devised in which everyone could get along. This is necessary especially in light of the internet and the interconnectivity it brought about.

Years ago Commodore advertised its top-of-the-line computer, the 64, based on memory size. We all knew it actually had 65,536 bytes (8-bit) of memory and used it to it's full extent through custom programming and formatting of that space. The same logic that applies to physical memory (RAM) applies to hard drives.

Possibly using 1 000 (k) instead of 1 024 (K) for kilo?

640 GB is un-formatted capacity of HDD, when you install Operating System; it will format it to create index and File allocation table. So it is showing less capacity what-ever shown on HDD or in specification.

This is general and apply to anyone not only Toshiba.

Where do you think the OS lives?

Have a look in to the history of PC's. In the good old days the OS lived on a 5½" disk, which had to be loaded before you could put the disk in with your program.

DOS = Disk Operating System!