why is only 111 gb of my 120 gb hard drive recognized?

Question

I formatted it and it only recognized 111....what's the deal

Answer 1

This is actually common. A real MB is actually 1,024 kb of memory, But most companies just round down to 1,000.

This throws off the values. If there is just one partition then you have 99% of the memory that is there. You would never get the full 120gb.

Answer 2

Two things are involved.

First, some of the space is used for system files needed for formatting and other information. So no hard drive will ever give you 100% of the space. It needs some for the drive to function. For a 120gb drive, it is around 6gb that the computer needs to run the drive.

The other is more devious. Computers measure there hard drive size in gigbytes (note the "y") that are 1024 mb to a gig. But computer manufacturer's will label their hard drives in gigbites (note the "i") which are 1000mb to a gig. Results are that the size on the box will read a little larger then what Windows will display the size as being. For a 120 gb drive, the different is 24x120, or just a hair under 3gb.

Between the two, that makes up the missing 9gb of your 120 gb hard drive.

Answer 3

An hd with 120 gb, really has about 111 gb, the people said 120 gb, but the true is 119185342464 bytes = 116391936 kilobytes = 113664 megabytes = 111 gb.

Because

1 Byte = 8 Bit
1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes
1 Megabyte = 1048576 Bytes
1 Gigabyte = 1073741824 Bytes

Answer 4

1) Your OS will use up some space if you are using it alone, or as a Master.
2) Due to the fact that 1024 bytes make up a Kb, 1024 Kb make up a Mb, and 1024 Mb make up a Gb, you never get the amount they say you have, at least not in computer terms. You buy 120 billion bytes < 120 Gb of actual memory. However, would it really matter much? If you need that small amount of space, you might as well have gotten a bigger HD.

Answer 5

Each hard drive needs a certain amount of room set aside by default.. this is normal. Your only seeing 111gigs because 10gigs or so of that is being used for the operating system, the motherboard, the monitor, your cd drives ROM, etc. This is why I tell people when they dont clean out their system, you need at least 10 gigs for Windows XP to function correctly. Afterwards, you will see a blue screen telling you that you ran out of virtual memory.

This is perfectly normal, nothing to worry about.

Answer 6

It is normal. I have a 320GB hard drive and it shows up as being only 298GB.