Did you ever wonder why a USB drive or hard drive has less storage space than promised? Right from the moment, we have started using computers and smartphones, we have seen that every flash drive and hard drive comes with less storage than promised. If I talk about my Sandisk’s 16GB pen drive, it actually has 14.5 GB of storage. So where the remaining 1.5 GB storage has gone?
Some of you might have heard that USB Drives and other storage devices Keep some space reserved for system files. This is true to some extent but the major reason behind this less storage is something else.
So Let’s figure out the reason.
In Schools and Colleges, we have learnt
I ‘ll take an example of my 16GB Pendrive.
From the manufacturer’s point of view, the 16GB will have 16*1000*1000*1000 = 16,000,000,000 bytes. However, our computers work on base 2 (binary) and for them, 16GB is actually 16*1024*1024*1024 = 17,179,869,184 bytes. So, my Sandisk pen drive that promised to have 16 GB storage space will actually show 14.9GB (approx) i.e 17,179,869,184 – 16,000,000,000 = 1,179,869,184 bytes (1.1 GB) less storage space when connected to a computer.
This difference in the method of computation is responsible for the “lost space”. However, It doesn’t matter when we purchase small storage devices like Memory Card, Pen drives but with hard disks, Look at the table below:
