most recent 30 from superuser.com 2010-03-16T13:42:32Z http://superuser.com/feeds/question/71974 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://superuser.com/questions/71974/hard-drive-size 3 Tim http://superuser.com/users/9265 2009-11-18T04:45:34Z 2009-11-18T06:09:42Z

<p>Hi,</p> <p>I just got a new Lenovo Laptop which has been installed with Windows 7 and is supposed to have 250G hard disk. </p> <p>Windows 7 reports that the hard disk drive has two parts: 221GB "C:" and 9.76GB "Lenovo Recovery". The sum of the two parts is 230.76GB.</p> <p>If I remember correctly, if divide 250G by 1024 three times, I will get 232.8GB, which should be what the OS reports as the hard drive size. But why the sum 230.76GB of the two parts of hard drive is still smaller than 232.8GB?</p> <p>Thanks!</p>

http://superuser.com/questions/71974/hard-drive-size/71977#71977 2 John T http://superuser.com/users/1931 2009-11-18T04:51:57Z 2009-11-18T04:51:57Z

<p>Because NTFS by design uses a piece of your volume for a MFT (Master File Table) which holds file names, creation dates, access permissions, and contents as metadata. The bigger the volume, the bigger the chunk NTFS will need.</p>

http://superuser.com/questions/71974/hard-drive-size/71982#71982 1 Wil http://superuser.com/users/4386 2009-11-18T05:01:29Z 2009-11-18T05:01:29Z

<p>Unfortunately, life's a bitch and this is one of those things that annoys people non stop.</p> <p>At least you are smart and understand that there is a conversion that needs to be made.</p> <p>The "extra" space is usually used up by the allocation table, meta data and various other items that just make it work without you needing to think of it... it is nothing to worry about.</p> <p>If you want to make 100% sure you have the correct drive, go in to device manager and expand hard drives, find the model number and Google it. If it reports the correct drive (which it should) there shouldn't be anything to worry about.</p>

http://superuser.com/questions/71974/hard-drive-size/71984#71984 1 Loren Pechtel http://superuser.com/users/6588 2009-11-18T05:10:54Z 2009-11-18T05:10:54Z

<p>A chunk of your loss at least is due to the partition table eating it's entire track--a horribly inefficient legacy we are left with.</p>

http://superuser.com/questions/71974/hard-drive-size/71987#71987 4 SevenT2 http://superuser.com/users/18435 2009-11-18T05:31:51Z 2009-11-18T05:31:51Z

<p>Actually. This is because harddrive manufacturers conform to the 1MB = 1,000 KB rule and your OS uses the 1MB = 1,024 KB rule.</p> <p>This would probably account for most of your lost space. Its normal. You will NEVER buy a drive that is the size it specifies, ever. I looked in to it myself not too long ago :)</p>

http://superuser.com/questions/71974/hard-drive-size/71994#71994 1 shf301 http://superuser.com/users/7745 2009-11-18T06:09:42Z 2009-11-18T06:09:42Z

<p>It could just be the manufacturer rounding the hard drive size to the nearest whole gigabyte. If we start with what Windows shows and calculate what that work out to in billion bytes:</p> <pre><code>232.8 * 2^30 / 10^9 = 249.9671 million bytes </code></pre> <p>So they just rounded the marketing size to 250, cause whose going to miss 0.0329 million bytes.</p> <p>If you can get the module number of the hard drive and get it's detailed specs and find it's sector count you can determine what the actual capacity of the drive really is.</p>