How do I detect all 250gb of my ssd?

[mxk]

Title is pretty much it. I'm trying to detect my new 250gb SSD, and it isn't my boot drive. I'm just using it until I put in my new PC as the boot drive.

 

I'm in storage management in windows 7 (Yes I still use windows 7), and I really have no idea how to make it detect all of the drive's space.

[Godlygamer23]

You should see your drive somewhere in there with unallocated space. Right click on that section(whichever one is the 250GB device) and click on New Simple Volume. 

 

If you don't see the drive or are seeing some weird anomalies, can you send a screenshot of what you see?

[Spotty]

5 minutes ago, mxk. said:

I'm trying to detect my new 250gb SSD, and it isn't my boot drive. I'm just using it until I put in my new PC as the boot drive.

Keep in mind any data you store on it now will be lost when you install it as the boot drive in your new PC. The OS installation process will format the drive.

In drive management select the drive and use Format. Follow the prompts and it will format the drive and assign it a drive letter and it will show up in "My Computer" as a usable drive. It should show as about 233GiB once formatted.

[Acid Panda]

a 256gb ssd will not have the total amount of space that you bought avaliable.

 

this is because part of it is partitioned for uses like caching and other uses. normally a 256gb will have abou 225gb of storage.

 

just the way it is sorry

[TempestCatto]

Well SSD's usually reserve a few gigs for garbage collection, caching, etc. I don't think you can turn that into usable space. (Windows 7 is superior btw, dont feel bad)

[Godlygamer23]

1 minute ago, Acid Panda said:

a 256gb ssd will not have the total amount of space that you bought avaliable.

Not available to the user, sure. But the drive really is 250GB.

 

Windows calculates space differently than drive manufacturers(Gibibytes vs Gigabytes).

[Acid Panda]

4 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Not available to the user, sure. But the drive really is 250GB.

 

Windows calculates space differently than drive manufacturers(Gibibytes vs Gigabytes).

true but the space is not really utilisable to the average user

[mxk]

11 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

You should see your drive somewhere in there with unallocated space. Right click on that section(whichever one is the 250GB device) and click on New Simple Volume. 

 

If you don't see the drive or are seeing some weird anomalies, can you send a screenshot of what you see?

Yup, got it. I'm installing a game to it right now. 

 

11 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Well SSD's usually reserve a few gigs for garbage collection, caching, etc. I don't think you can turn that into usable space. (Windows 7 is superior btw, dont feel bad)

I love windows 7. I wish I could use it on my new PC

[mxk]

12 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Keep in mind any data you store on it now will be lost when you install it as the boot drive in your new PC. The OS installation process will format the drive.

In drive management select the drive and use Format. Follow the prompts and it will format the drive and assign it a drive letter and it will show up in "My Computer" as a usable drive. It should show as about 233GiB once formatted.

Yup, I guess this was also a verification that I didn't get a lemon SSD. I'll be installing my games back to my HDD but I just want to use this in the meantime.

 

Hows 2019?

[Godlygamer23]

3 minutes ago, mxk. said:

Yup, got it. I'm installing a game to it right now. 

 

I love windows 7. I wish I could use it on my new PC

Awesome.

I also want to mention that depending on the drive you purchased, you should not have any capacity loss due to the above things mentioned(garbage collection, caching, etc) because drive manufacturers will usually include extra NAND flash on the PCB for maintenance, longevity, and speed purposes that are not accessible by the user. The drive will use that so as not to not affect the user experience if that experience were to be degraded.

[mxk]

2 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Awesome.

I also want to mention that depending on the drive you purchased, you should not have any capacity loss due to the above things mentioned(garbage collection, caching, etc) because drive manufacturers will usually include extra NAND flash on the PCB for maintenance, longevity, and speed purposes that are not accessible by the user. The drive will use that so as not to not affect the user experience if that experience were to be degraded.

I think there's about 230gb for me to use. Very good to know!

[Godlygamer23]

5 minutes ago, mxk. said:

I think there's about 230gb for me to use. Very good to know!

Also keep in mind that Windows reports capacity differently to drive manufacturers.

 

Windows uses Gibibytes whereas drive manufacturers use Gigabytes. Gibibytes is abbreviated to GiB and of course, Gigabytes, GB.

 

1GB is equal to about 931 mebibytes. So if you have a 1000GB hard drive, Windows will report it as 931GB, even though it's actually 931GiB. 

[Spotty]

Just now, mxk. said:

Yup, I guess this was also a verification that I didn't get a lemon SSD. I'll be installing my games back to my HDD but I just want to use this in the meantime.

 

Hows 2019?

You can run programs such as HD Sentinel or CrystalDiskMark64 to check the performance of the drive to ensure it's working correctly.
 

15 minutes ago, Acid Panda said:

a 256gb ssd will not have the total amount of space that you bought avaliable.

 

this is because part of it is partitioned for uses like caching and other uses. normally a 256gb will have abou 225gb of storage.

 

just the way it is sorry

 

15 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Well SSD's usually reserve a few gigs for garbage collection, caching, etc. I don't think you can turn that into usable space. (Windows 7 is superior btw, dont feel bad)

The advertised drive capacity of a SSD does not include the hidden space reserved for garbage collection/TRIM. That hidden storage space is in addition to what is advertised, so for example a 240GB advertised SSD may really have 256GB worth of NAND flash storage on it.

As @Godlygamer23 has already explained, the reason you don't get the full advertised storage capacity is the same reason why you don't get the full advertised storage capacity on a HDD. Windows measures in "Gibibytes" (base 2) and drive manufacturers measure in "Gigabytes" (base 10).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

As an example, here's a 500GB SSD and a 6TB HDD, both of which don't match the advertised capacity due to the above reason.