What ever OS it does have. I have no idea what OS it runs, I just know it shows as 465.7 GB when the drive is empty, or freshly formatted.
Krusty, Correct. A 500 GigaByte HD or SSD is a 465.7 GibiByte drive. It's just different units. No loss of capacity. Microsoft Disk Management reports the units in GibiBytes even though it uses the GB abbreviation. The drive shows as 465.7 GiB whether it is unpartioned/unformatted or partitioned/formatted. You can put 500 GigaBytes of data (465.7 GibiBytes) into the formatted partition if you like.
No, YOU DO NOT LOSE SPACE AFTER FORMATTING. If you buy a "500 GB" hard drive (example), you WILL NOT lose 7% of it's space after formatting, because that "lost space" simply does NOT exist. As correctly mentioned, one gigabyte for HD and flash memory storage manufactures isn't actually one GiB as we know it (1024 MiBytes), but it's actually 931.32 MiB. Whether you format the disk or not, that's what you'll get. The created partition itself could reserve several GiB's for whatever reason the filesystem might want inside this same partition, but the overall space on the disk does ***NOT*** change just because you formatted. This is known for at least Hard Drives, USB sticks, and SSD's. RAM, on the other hand, correctly advertises it's full capacity AFAIK. No, it did not. He will have 465 GiB either way, formatting or not. That's the total available drive capacity the factory makes available to the users, in the case of the SSD. Because liking it or not, you buy (e.g.) an advertised 500 GB SDD but only receive ~93% of that advertised space, because corporations like to **** consumers up the ***, so instead of actually giving the users the total amount advertised PLUS whatever space the drive needs to operate, they take away space from the advertised capacity. It's like a car factory advertising an 8-piston engine with 800 hp, but in reality you only get to use 7 pistons because the 8th is used to drive a super-high-pressure oil pump that prevents the engine from overheating, because this engine has a design flaw. It doesn't make any sense. That's terrible info, actually. So that they can sell more fictional GiB's, be it for HD's or SSD's. Either one doesn't deliver the promise. Exactly, in the case of HD's. In the case of SSD's, supposedly (if you trust manufactures) there is 500GiB but 7% is reserved (as mentioned above, and because SSD's are a special snowflake). In this aspect, mood is actually correct. What he is not correct about, however, is that 7% of the drive capacity is lost after formatting. That is utterly ridiculous. If it's ~7% of the drive capacity, and the advertised capacity is "320 GiB" (just an example), then it should not take away 7% of the advertised space (320 GiB) for the sake of the drive's health, but it should contain +7% of the advertised capacity, in this case 22,4 GiB of extra space to account for wear and over provision. Since it does "take away" 7% of the advertised space, that is completely BS and companies should not do it. If I buy a 320 GiB drive I should receive 320 GiB to store data; whatever else the drive needs for wear and provisioning should not impact the capacity I'm allowed to use. Because of false advertising. Exactly the same for HD's. It has nothing to do with formatting, though. Unless the manufacturers actually use the filesystem to reserve that space upon formatting, which is not a smart idea since a custom filesystem could be used to not create that 7% reserved area, in which case the user would have all the supposedly advertised space available to them. Which, again, only shows how SSD's design is flawed and how consumers are tricked into thinking they're buying 320 GB (GiB) but only receive ~298 GiB. False advertising, trickery. Exactly. It's not, because the vast majority of consumers are non-techy people who think they're buying something when in fact they're getting "less". You seem confused. If 1024 came way before RAM/HD's, and it's the logical and practical measurement of space to use, then there is absolutely no reason for manufacturers to say their drives have (e.g.) 500 GB when in fact it has 465 GB. And really? I have no idea how you managed to put the metric system in there, it has nothing to do with computing storage. But since you put that there, imagine I started selling "1 liter" bottles that contained a lower number of milliliters because I started using a different base number and gave whatever excuse I managed to pull out of my ***, saying that everything is confusing or whatever. That would also be called deception. If a file cabinet is advertised as "it can hold 1000 sheets of paper", then it's required by law be able to contain those 1000 sheets of paper. They design the cabinet specifically to be able to do so, they'd probably measure "how thick" 1000 sheets of paper are (from numerous specifications) and make it so that this cabinet can hold them all. For the thinnest sheet, the cabinet would hold more than 1000. Obviously in this example you cannot add folders/dividers/indexes/etc. Which leads to the companies intentionally using the wrong standard, intentionally selling less GiB's than they actually advertise.
TL-DL It's like a car factory advertising an 8-piston engine with 800 hp, but in reality you only get to use 7 pistons (and 700 hp) because the 8th piston is used to drive a super-high-pressure oil pump that prevents the engine from overheating, because this engine has a design flaw. It doesn't make any sense and is obviously used in a malicious false-advertising. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Oh boy! I bought a 500 GB SSD/HD! (5 mins later).... Wait, I only have 465 GB? " "Oh boy! I bought an 8-piston 800 HP car! (5 mins later).... Wait, I can only use 7 of them and 700 hp? "
And the manufacturer's over-provisioning is a percentage over and above the 500 GB. The percentage varies depending on the SSD. The full 500 GB is available as user space if you want to 100% fill your drive, which you wouldn't do. You can create further over-provisioning if you like, simply by having free space inside or outside of a partition. Change 465.7 GB to 465.7 GiB and I'd agree. But even so, 500 GB is available. 465.7 GiB is the same amount of space as 500 GB.
Formatted, less will be available due to the metadata required as part of the disk structure (created as part of the format). NTFS reserves 12.5% by default for the MFT leaving less available space. https://technet.microsoft.com/fr-fr/library/cc781134(v=ws.10) goes into quite some detail.
Of course it has an OS. I don't know what you mean by "common OS" but I would bet it is Linux. No it's not. 1000 = 1Kilo. That is just a fact. And 1024 = 1Kilo. Also a fact. I am not the one confused at all. I learned the difference way back in the early 70s when I went to school to become an electronics technician. It is you who just don't want to accept there are differences. It is use who are confused otherwise you would understand the space difference between a "raw" drive and one that has been formatted. Which is actually why drive makers started using 1000 = 1 kilo - because the vast majority of users are non-techy people and understand that 1000 = 1K, but don't understand that 1024 = 1K too. I am not one to naturally except "because it has always been this way" as an excuse. But the fact of the matter is, "it has always been this way". And since this involves dozens and dozens of companies, 1000s of different products, and billions and billions of devices already out in the field, you starting up this ancient argument is not going make anyone change now. So you just need to understand the difference so you stop being confused, accept it, and move on. That's what I am doing.
I'm not starting this debate, because it's been there for decades, and I do understand the difference between the two mentioned standards. If, however, you didn't understand why it's trickery to advertise "500 GB" but use a different standard that actually makes the capacity be 7% less of what's advertised (or if you just have a really different opinion on this), then I shall not waste my time anymore, we're not going anywhere by further discussing this subject. This post should already cover any part of the debate regarding this matter, anything else is most likely than not redundant.
The marketing version rounds to the closest GB so that would be 500GB to convert to GiB 500,000,000,000 / (1024*1024*1024) = 465.6612873077392578125 My actual drive is marketed as a 250GB Windows reports right down to the number of bytes as 250,057,060,352 which when Marketing rounds it to GB is the 250GB to convert to GiB 250,057,060,352 / (1024*1024*1024) = 232.883785247802734375 and just to confirm, Reflect reports in GiB, rounded to two decimal places as: used = 68.82 free = 164.07 if you add those together you get total = 232.89 due to the rounding The only way that formatting will lose noticable space is if you specify less than the recommended number of MB when you format. In the above example of my disc, converting to MiB 250,057,060,352 / (1024*1024) = 238,472.99609375MiB, which isn't an integer, so it's likely that when formatting I was prompted to use 238,473MiB for a single partition which would occupy the entire disk, but I don't remember and I'm not going to do it again now and lose my 'stuff'.
Rather than start a thread I thought I'd slip this in here: The SSD Endurance Experiment: They're all dead This is the end, beautiful friend.... http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead
I started this thread with the question quoted above. Thirty something posts later I believe the concensus is that (with the glaring exception of NGRhodes' post #32) there will be negligible storage loss due to formatting. However, Windows will report the total capacity of the 500GB SSD to be about 465GB (but I'm also led to believe that Windows should have reported it as 465GiB)! Do I have that right?
Buy it, or not. Bill is correct. In 1978, I bought a computer, and I started coding in Assembly language, Before that, I spent two years in a programming school supported by IBM. 1000 was the standard set, because the mathematics was easier for people to understand, than adding up 1024. This was principally set when hard disks were made commercially available, as ram, tape drives, and later, floppy disks were using 1024. When optical media was introduced, it was accepted as a standard for that also. Otherwise, you'd have some media addressed as "1024" and other media addressed as "1000". This would be very confusing to most. Personally, I wish they would've used the "1024" as a standard, but I understand why they didn't. To me, it's not worth worrying about. Did I agree with this standard? No. I just accepted it due to no other option. There is a far more technical explanation for this, however, I do not have the time, nor the space to do this, and some I've forgotten (I'm an old guy, and it's been a VERY long time since I've been in school!). There is no point in worrying over it, as it's not going to change. My best advice? calculate what you're going to use, then get at least 8 times the amount of storage you need. SSD drives need space redundancy, due to the fact they have limited read/write cycles. This is the reason I'm still on 7200, and 10,000 rpm, mechanical drives.
Why was this 5 month dormant thread dredged up from the deep? Thanks. I hate to be wrong so I typically do my homework and verify my facts before posting. And I try to include links to support my position, as I did in my first reply so folks can see for themselves and not think it is just me flapping my lips.
