# Western Digital 640GB Hard drive Showing as 596GB



## m3incorp (Apr 25, 2009)

When I launch Disc Management, these are the numbers that I get:

Used Space    54,501,568,512 bytes       50.7GB

Free Space   585,630,941,376 bytes       545GB

Capacity      640,132,575,232 bytes       596GB

How come the descreptency between the bytes and the GB.  Everywhere it's showing as a 596GB Hard drive.

I am using Windows Vista Premium 64 bit with SP1.

Can anyone tell me the reason for this?


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## Cleric7x9 (Apr 25, 2009)

because hdd manufacturers measure 1GB as 1000MB and Microsoft measures 1GB as 1024MB


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## m3incorp (Apr 25, 2009)

Oh yeah, that's right...what was I thinking...Thanks


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## kkpudge7 (Apr 28, 2009)

I'm in the computer forensics field, and we are trying to shift the commonly used MB (MegaByte) terminology, to MiB (MibiByte), KiB (KibiByte), and GiB (GibiBye). 

These terms represent the true 1024 Bytes which make a KiB, 1024 KiB which make a Gib etc.

Its confusing, but yea, manufactures measure space in increments of 1000's, while the computer world uses 1024's. When we're talking about Terrabytes, that extra 24 is quite a bit of space.


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## 2048Megabytes (Apr 29, 2009)

Whenever a hard drive is formatted it will have approximately 93 percent of the advertised storage space.  It is not also not wise to fill a hard drive up to more than 90 percent of its capacity as you can corrupt data and crash the hard drive.   So in reality, you only have about 536 gigabytes of usable hard drive space.


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## tyttebøvs (Apr 30, 2009)

2048Megabytes said:


> It is not also not wise to fill a hard drive up to more than 90 percent of its capacity as you can corrupt data and crash the hard drive.



I have tried filling my drives up 100% many times without anything happening (other than the "out of harddrive space" message).


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## 2048Megabytes (Apr 30, 2009)

tyttebøvs said:


> I have tried filling my drives up 100% many times without anything happening (other than the "out of harddrive space" message).



I've read about other people losing all their data filling up a hard drive all the way.  It also isn't good to do it as I think you need at least 10 percent of a hard drive free to defragment it.


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## Jamin43 (Apr 30, 2009)

2048Megabytes said:


> I've read about other people losing all their data filling up a hard drive all the way.  It also isn't good to do it as I think you need at least 10 percent of a hard drive free to defragment it.



Yep - I've also been past the 93 % mark and my PC was running incredibly slow - but never had any crashes.


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