Formatting a HDD?

[Guest lilbman]

Hey guys,

 

I bought a SATA to USB hard drive enclosure for my old laptop hard drive, since it's still usable.  It's 750 gigabytes, but it only comes up at 670 when I format it.  How do I fully utilize the size?  

 

 

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, lilbman said:

Hey guys,

 

I bought a SATA to USB hard drive enclosure for my old laptop hard drive, since it's still usable.  It's 750 gigabytes, but it only comes up at 670 when I format it.  How do I fully utilize the size?  

 

 

it is advertised as one size but formatting it shows the true size. 

[manikyath]

the amount of lost space there sounds a bit steep, but you do lose a chunk of the "actual size" to the way partitioning works.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

it is advertised as one size but formatting it shows the true size. 

Yeah but it should not be that much. a 1TB drive actual size is only ~930 GB (70 difference)

A 500GB is 465 (35 difference)

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/172191en?language=en_US

 

 

 

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Yeah but it should not be that much. a 1TB drive actual size is only ~930 GB (70 difference)

A 500GB is 465 (35 difference)

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/172191en?language=en_US

 

 

 

may be due to bad sectors 

[Cam2363]

18 minutes ago, lilbman said:

Hey guys,

 

I bought a SATA to USB hard drive enclosure for my old laptop hard drive, since it's still usable.  It's 750 gigabytes, but it only comes up at 670 when I format it.  How do I fully utilize the size?  

 

 

You cant when using ntfs, i have a terabyte hdd and it only lets me use 931 so as far as im concerned there is no way to get all the gigabytes in the windows os. If your using as an external drive i think you get it all with fat32 but if your gonna use it with windows there is no way

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, manikyath said:

the amount of lost space there sounds a bit steep, but you do lose a chunk of the "actual size" to the way partitioning works.

 

13 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

may be due to bad sectors 

you don't lose

 any space. The hdd is rated in gigabytes, while the os uses gibibytes.

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, Cam2363 said:

You cant when using ntfs, i have a terabyte hdd and it only lets me use 931 so as far as im concerned there is no way to get all the gigabytes in the windows os. If your using as an external drive i think you get it all with fat32 but if your gonna use it with windows there is no way

Drive manufacturers measure GBs by 10⁷ whereas Windows (and many OS) will use 2²⁰.

[Dark]

If it was used previously then there are likely other partitions not seen by the OS (or at least not being presented with a drive letter).

 

If in windows, check the drive in disk management and remove any other partitions on the disk. If you're unable to do this then use diskpart via command prompt. 

[manikyath]

32 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

 

you don't lose

 any space. The hdd is rated in gigabytes, while the os uses gibibytes.

i know, i was rather saying the difference between "the capacity on the tin" and the result in OS seems a bit steeper than expected.

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i know, i was rather saying the difference between "the capacity on the tin" and the result in OS seems a bit steeper than expected.

He should be "losing" about 51GB once the decimal is converted to binary units.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

He should be "losing" about 51GB once the decimal is converted to binary units.

which is a decent chunk less than 750 =>670

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, Cam2363 said:

You cant when using ntfs, i have a terabyte hdd and it only lets me use 931 so as far as im concerned there is no way to get all the gigabytes in the windows os. If your using as an external drive i think you get it all with fat32 but if your gonna use it with windows there is no way

No.  NO.  You are NOT missing any gigabyte.  The Hard Drive manufacturers and Windows are each using different units of measurements.  Specfically, Windows does NOT measure in Megabytes, Gigabytes or Terabytes.  It measures in Mebibytes, Gibibytes and Tebibytes.  These are slightly larger units of measurements and thusly you see 'less' units because the units are larger.  Much as how imperial highway speed is normally 65 miles per hour where as it's typically 100 kilometers per hour.  Both are nearly the same speed but since a kilometer is shorter than a mile, your speed uses more units when measured in Kilometers Per Hour.

 

That all said, a 750 TB HDD should be 698 Gibibytes in Windows. 670 is low.  I would wonder if the drive has a separate 30GB partition for some sorta built in backup software or something like that.  A lot of off the shelf external drives have such things.  I'd check to see if there are other partitions.