May032012

Why did 30GB of storage vanish from my hard disk?

Rajeev Dandu asks:

I have hard disk of capacity 500GB. Previously I installed Windows 7.

Now again I’m reinstalling Windows 7 and during installation I deleted that partition (I wanted to give 50GB for Windows 7 and rest for other things).

The problem is the unallocated space is 467GB out of 500GB.

What happened to that 30 GB ???

I deleted all partitions.


Browser: Explorer 9
System: Windows 7
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5 Answers -

0 votes

Matt Smith

May 3, 2012

It’s common for hard drives to lose a portion of space to overhead. All drives do this, you probably just did not notice it before. The portion lost tends to be larger with larger hard drives.

0 votes

Bruce Epper

May 3, 2012

The issue here is that drive manufacturers use base 10 when calculating storage size while the computer is using base 2 for its measurements. So 467GB * 1024^3 = 501437431808.

Rajeev Dandu

thank you!!!

May 3, 2012
0 votes

ha14

May 3, 2012

30GB can be system files for the hard drive not available for the user?

0 votes

Anthony Murphy

May 3, 2012

its just the way the manufacturers format it when the hard drive is first created and round it to the nearest hundred to make it easier for the buyer. It happens on every hard drive, flash drive etc. There is nothing that can be done.

0 votes

mdhussain

November 5, 2012

I have hard disk of capacity 500GB. Previously I installed Windows 7.

Now again I’m reinstalling Windows 7 and during installation I deleted that partition (I wanted to give 50GB for Windows 7 and rest for other things).

it is appear 20gb of 50gb where and
What happened to that 30 GB ???

I deleted all partitions.