Is it normal that windows is taking 370 GB of storage in my 4TB SSD?

[DankDoodles]

I bought a new SSD which is 4TB of storage because my steam games were taking up a lot of space. After I added it and format the SSD, I moved my Steam Games.

 

I then realize that for some reason under the SSD Properties, it says that the capacity of the SSD is 3.63 TB! Where did the 370 GB of storage go??

[Mark Kaine]

Quote

Decimal and binary translate to the same amount of storage capacity. Let's say you wanted to measure the distance from point A to point B. The distance from A to B is 1 kilometer or .621 miles. It is the same distance, but it is reported differently due to the measurement.

Capacity Calculation Formula

Decimal capacity / 1,048,576 = Binary MB capacity
Decimal capacity / 1,073,741,824 = Binary GB capacity
Decimal capacity / 1,099,511,627,776 = Decimal TB capacity

Example as per your question:
A 4 TB hard drive is approximately 4,000,000,000,000 bytes (4,000 x 1,000,000,000).

4,000,000,000,000 / 1,048,576 = 3814697.265625 megabytes (MB) = 3725.3 gigabytes (GB)

and some of it (100mb or so) will be system reserved.

 

tldr: maths 

[DankDoodles]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

and some of it (100mb or so) will be system reserved.

 

tldr: maths 

Why is Windows 10 taking up 370 GB for "system" stuff for my (D:) SSD instead of where Windows 10 is installed (C:)?

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

4,000,000,000,000 / 1,048,576 = 3814697.265625 megabytes (MB) = 3725.3 gigabytes (GB)

it does not.

 

your 3.6tb are 4tb, depending on if you use decimal or binary system. 

 

1 hour ago, DankDoodles said:

Why is Windows 10 taking up 370 GB for "system" stuff for my (D:) SSD instead of where Windows 10 is installed (C:)?

 

[Lurick]

48 minutes ago, DankDoodles said:

I bought a new SSD which is 4TB of storage because my steam games were taking up a lot of space. After I added it and format the SSD, I moved my Steam Games.

 

I then realize that for some reason under the SSD Properties, it says that the capacity of the SSD is 3.63 TB! Where did the 370 GB of storage go??

Nowhere, it's the difference between what Windows uses (*iB) for (Mib-, Gib-, etc) ibibytes and Gigabytes, Terabytes, etc. for how it counts storage. It's a difference of units, nothing more.

[Lurick]

An article to explain it better than what I just wrote:

https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/why-does-my-hard-drive-report-less-capacity-than-indicated-on-the-drives-label-172191en/

 

tl;dr @Mark Kaineis correct, decimal vs binary conversion is all

[tikker]

It's the classic 1000 vs 1024 issue. The drive manufacturer has given you 4 terabytes of disk space, but Windows (confusingly) counts in TiB (tebibytes, binary) while calling it TB (terabytes, metric).

 

If we adhere to the metric system, we express our things in factors of 10. A metric kilobyte will be 1000 bytes. A binary kilobyte, however, is 1024 bytes and often called a kibibyte to distinguish it as such. This trickles down to 4 terabytes being 4 * 1000^4 bytes under the metric system, but 4 tebibytes being 4 * 1024^4 bytes in the binary system.

 

The conversion factor will always be tied to that ratio of 1000/1024:

 

1 kB = 1000   B | 1 KiB = 1024   B

1 MB = 1000^2 B | 1 MiB = 1024^2 B

1 GB = 1000^3 B | 1 GiB = 1024^3 B

1 TB = 1000^4 B | 1 TiB = 1024^4 B

1 PB = 1000^5 B | 1 PiB = 1024^5 B

 

If you want to go from metric to binary, pick the size you are converting and multiply with (1000/1024) raised to the appropriate power. Converting your drive size gives you

 

4 TB * (1000 / 1024)^4 TiB/TB = 3.638 TiB,

 

or as Windows calls it 3.638 "TB", which perfeclty explains your "missing" 300 or so GB.