Why does my computer specs say it has a 20GB hard drive, but when I check on disk capacity, it says 18.6GB?

Answer 1

normally computer stats give an estimated number as the hard drive cant be made to be EXACTLY the storage it is meant to be. the same way usb drives cant be.

either that or 1.4 gbs are used up already. that may be because ur operating system [windows xp, vista etc] uses up storage just like any program.

Answer 2

This is a common marketing trick pulled by the manufacturers of hard drives.

In the hard drive world, 20 GB = 20,000,000,000 bytes
In the general computer world, 20 GB = ( 20 * 2^30 ) = 21,474,836,480 bytes

So, when you load up your "hard drive 20GB" drive into your computer, it converts it to actual GB, which is ( 20,000,000,000 / 2^30 ) = 18.6

Answer 3

Remember that 1 GB =/= 1000MB, the correct figure should be 1024.

The hard disk will definitely give you 20,000,000,000 bytes, so if you want to convert that to GB, you will get:

20,000,000,000 / 1024^3, which is approximately 18.6 GB.

Hope that helps =)

Answer 4

You loose 7.4% because they use 1000 bytes =1 kilobyte instead of 1024. They also do the same with kilobytes to megabytes, and so on.

Answer 5

Oh my goodness, I was going to answer this, but you got it explained to you perfectly by; Bill Smith, Catbox 360, Pi Boy314 and Jsy3k. You got lucky with who found your question to answer. Those four are absolutely correct and the other answers are complete rubbish.



Happy Yahooing! ; )

Answer 6

hard drive makers count in decimal = 10

windows counts in binary = 8

1gb = 1000mb in hd manufacturer

1gb = 1024mb in windows

Answer 7

18.6 gd is what left of the hard drive becuase u install windows

Answer 8

the 18.6 is what space you have left after windows and any other program that you have is taken into account.

Answer 9

There might be a hidden partition there that holds the recovery kit.