Why do electronics not have the same storage capacity as it says on the box?

Question

Example: A 160 External hard Drive show up as a 153GB hard drive in My Computer

Answer 1

This is an ongoing battle that recently concluded in a law suit.
Hard drive manufacturers have always rated their drives with megabytes measured in decimal (1000x1000), while all computer operating systems use binary (1024x1024). which results in few MB.
Also, when a drive is formatted for use by a system, some of the storage space is used to keep track of how the rest of the space is used and thus the available space may be reported as smaller.

Answer 2

When the product is formatted to actually do what its supposed to do, it that takes up a little bit of the space that is on the storage device. That happens with pretty much any form of external disk drive (usb flash drives, cd/dvds, external hard drives, etc.)

Answer 3

Generally it's due to formatting or backup space. I don't know about all electronics, but most contain a clause somewhere on the box that the formatting may take up some of the space before use.

For instance, I have a 2GB flashdrive that only has 1.98 or something similar like that b/c of preformatting so it'll run as soon as you plug it in. It's pretty common.

Answer 4

The unaccounted space that is absent on the working hard drive consists of firmware and files that are required by the hard drive to work the hard drive itself. Its total capacity is 160GB, but there is 7GB of firmware and file management stuff that needs to remain there (cant be deleted) in order for the drive to work.
Hope this helps. Best wishes.

Answer 5

I knew the answer. Ans Mike is the one that has it right. The manufacturer's are going to go with the bigger number, because it looks like a larger hard drive and is completely legal (my "200" gig external is actually 186 gigs).

Answer 6

on condition which you think of you are able to play alongside right. If that regarded conceivable, then i could attempt a head-pretend: "pay attention that? -- it is the hearth alarm, the hearth branch is on their way. confident, i'm fairly specific." etc. Failing that, you need to distract the guy in simple terms long sufficient so you might ruin out and contact the paramedics. oftentimes conversing, however, on account which you have a ideal to no longer be harmed and an felony accountability to guard your self, it is ideal to stay out of somebody else's fable.

Answer 7

Simple reason

While partitioning, there is some space alloted to something called FAT. File Allocation Table.

This space is used for that. thats the first thing read in order to display something for you. It is just like a list of files with their information, paths where they are stored.


Thank you.

Answer 8

The answer is one of two things, that is that there could be some sort of software on it that helps it to run, like u3 (POS) on some flash drives. This could also be there for recovery.

Answer 9

you will never have max usage of the harddrive cause some of the space is allocated for system files

Answer 10

it has files already loaded on it no big deal