Wrong size HDD

[toosh]

hi guys,just got me a 320gb WD external HDD on sale at Tesco.Ive plugged it in and all is fine but Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit is showing it as a 299gb HDD.Would this be a Windows error,as in the 32bit only shows 2gb of memory.Cheers in advance

 

[seumasbeathan]

With storage devices you do not actually get all of the capacity to use as storage, for example I have a 1TB drive but only 931GB of that is actually usable, this is nothing to worry about

 

[toosh]

cheers for the reply.Just an update,ive just transfered 2.5 gig of stuff to the drive and its still showing i have 299gb of space left

 

[Bang]

Once formatted no version of Windows will ever show the actual size of the drive. Part of this is due to the super-secret hidden++ folders that windows uses to keep track of everything you do, every webpage, picture etc is logged. You cant get to those folders unless you know your way around DOS, and know the commands to find them. Formatting in itself requires a certain amount of space to be used just to write the particular type filing system, be it FAT or NTFS.

 

[toosh]

thanks guys,im happy.And the HDD came pre-formatted in NTFS and was £49.99 reduced to £37.49 so i cant complain either way

 

[Bang]

Sweet. Discounts are always nice.