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Boogyman0202 t1_iu4s5k4 wrote

Reply to comment by whurpurgis in Eli5: Where do our files go when we delete them from the trash can in our computer? by StarExact5602

So I've always wondered, is that why when you get a new hard drive that's 1 gig the computer says it's really 998mb ?

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crash866 t1_iu4u0ga wrote

Some manufacturers use base10 for size while your computer measures it is binary.

A gigabyte (GB) -- pronounced with two hard Gs -- is a unit of data storage capacity that is roughly equivalent to 1 billion bytes. In decimal notation (base 10), a gigabyte is exactly 1 billion bytes. In binary notation (base 2), a gigabyte is equal to 230 bytes, or 1,073,741,824 bytes.

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xRmg t1_iu4u7uk wrote

This has to do how hdd manufacturers count bytes. They count in terrabytes, where one TB is 10^12 bytes.

Operating systems count in Tebibytes, where one TiB is 2^40 bytes.

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breckenridgeback t1_iu4sclz wrote

No, that's because the hard drive itself reserves some storage for the programs that manage it (or, if it's a new prebuilt computer, some space is taken by the operating system).

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HaikuBotStalksMe t1_iu528lr wrote

Nope. You lose space because of the file structure. The hard drive has to have a way to make like a table of contents, so to speak, and that info takes up space.

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