3tb hard drive only showing 2.7tb available

MrHyde1969

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Hi,
I have just added a new western digital cool spin 3tb hard drive as a n addition to my htpc, but when I use the windows7 disk manager to create a partion it will only give me 2.7tb. I am aware that u never get the full advertised amount of space but loosing 300gb seems excessive:mad: thats like 10 bluray rips!!! Am I doing something wrong? is there a way to get more available space? Is there a way to partition and format a 3tb hard drive outside the windows enviorment?? If not then perhaps I am better off getting a USB3 3tb hard drive:rolleyes:
 
sounds about right hard drives are measured decimaly ie 1000 instead of 1024,my 2 tb loses 190gb so i expect 300gb to be reasonable.bits and bytes.
 
Last edited:
Yes the formatting process takes a fair chunk. Think of it like drawing grid lines on a blank piece of paper.
 
thats not the entire answer
a megabyte is 1024
a megabit is 1000
therefore a 3 tb is actually only about 2.8 tbytes to start with.
manufacturers use a defunct system to inflate actual storage so 3000gb was never there to start.
 
It's the way Windows reports hard drive capacity. Apple Macs would report a 3Tb drive as 3Tb, because like the drive manufacturers, they use the decimal system.
 
Well i didnt expect to loose so much, Bios reports it as a 3tb hard drive. Oh well atleast I know I havnt done something wrong and that I have just been screwed for 300g
:)
 
Well i didnt expect to loose so much, Bios reports it as a 3tb hard drive. Oh well atleast I know I havnt done something wrong and that I have just been screwed for 300g
:)
The bigger the hard drive the more you "lose".

1TB = 931GB / 69GB lost
2TB = 1862GB / 138GB lost
3TB = 2793GB / 207GB lost
 
You didn't lose anything really it's just companies sell storage using decimal so you got 3000 billion bytes. If you look in windows on computer in drive properties it will tell you that the capacity of the disk is still 3000 billion bytes
 
You didn't lose anything really it's just companies sell storage using decimal so you got 3000 billion bytes. If you look in windows on computer in drive properties it will tell you that the capacity of the disk is still 3000 billion bytes
Hence why I said "lose".
 

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