My 320gb hard drive only shows 297gb...why?

Question

i just bought it today so it brand new....on the box it says 320gb but on my computer it only says 297gb free of 297gb.....why?!?!?!

Answer 1

Marketing math vs. real math

Marketing calculates capacity as 1000 BYTES = 1 kilobyte

However, computer actually use 1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte

When you compound that to megabytes (1024x1024 vs 1000x1000), then gigabytes (1024x1024x1024 vs. 1000x1000x1000), plus a little bit of space needed for the operating system's formatting and such, you get 297 GB.

Answer 2

It has to do with the file system. An operating system must have a 'file system' in place to track where things are on the hard drive, so the missing space you have is due to necessary file system files. It can be anywhere of 3-15% of the advertised space that is missing, so your 8% is fairly normal.

Also, hard drives are advertised in Base 10, where as a computer reads in Base 2.

Giga vs. Gibi. So, in essence, you have two things that will reduce the available space on your hard drive.

Answer 3

What they said about the math and the system uses some for its own purposes and it only shows the amount available to you.
The same holds true for memory.

Answer 4

320 GB means, 320,000,000,000 bytes...

320 GB is actually 343,597,383,680 bytes.

convert 320,000,000,000 bytes into gigabytes, using the actual 1024 bytes per KB, 1024 KB per MB and 1024 MB per GB, you get 298.02 GB.