Why is it only 120GB when you plug the drive in? I opened the package and plugged it into my USB 3.0 drive and it only reads 120GBs.

Question

Berlin · Accepted Answer

The reason has to do with math and marketing.

Humans think about numbers in base 10, the decimal numeral system. Computers, on the other hand, think in base 2, the binary numeral system. Herein lies the root of the issue. The “brilliant” marketing people at data storage companies decided early on that all their products should be marketed in the decimal system. Therefore, one megabyte on their products is equal to 1,000,000 bytes, and one gigabyte is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes. To a computer, a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes. For each gigabyte advertised in base 10, you’re actually receiving about 70 megabytes less than a gigabyte in base 2. Imagine if they pulled that with things like gasoline...people would be livid. Hope that explains it...

Confibox · Answer

Check this out:

"PNY defines 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes; however, a computer defines 1GB as more than 1GB at 1,073,741,824. If you divide the announced density by the computer’s 1GB definition, you will get the available space.

For example: 64,000,000,000 (64GB) divided by 1,073,741,842 = 59.6GB of available space."

Source: PNY Website - Support/USB/FAQs

Tygrys · Answer

That's normal, you always have a few Gigs less..Windows is using binary units. That’s why this confusion comes up. Windows measures in 1024 chunks where as hard drive manufacturers measure in 1000 chunks. So your 128gb drive shows up in windows as 120gb..this has been going on for a long time, hard drives have the same issue..any storage device really running in Windows. No worries.

Answered by Tygrys 10 years ago

Tiger405 · Answer

It has to do with the way Windows displays and measures bytes. The manufacturers measure drive size at 1K=1000 bytes and Windows displays it at 1K=1024 bytes.
So to Windows a 128gb drive = 128 x 1000 x 1000 x 1000 / 1024 /1024 /1024 = which is approx 119GB

mikej · Answer

A gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes...not an even 1,000,000...so when you calculate the size it will always be a smaller number. look at your picture, the free space is 129 million bytes, not 120

Doofus · Answer

Formatting the drive always takes some space. That's standard for any type of drive.

profpesh · Answer

because of formatting

Ricku · Answer

Not all Usb's are Created equal, for example Mine has 129

Tim14527 · Answer

All external Drives use some space for various reasons. Partitioning the drive etc. However, with this particular Drive when I plugged it into my old USB Computer and loaded several photos in a New Folder mine still says 120gb available. Hope this helps!

Answered by Tim14527 10 years ago

NJam · Answer

Some of the in any flash card memory is always used to enable the device. If you buy a 128 SSD computer, you won't have 128 GB of storage because some is used to run the computer. How much storage should be actually necessary for a simple device like a flash card? I don't know, but when you look at capacity in GBs, you never get the full amount.

Answered by NJam 10 years ago

DonM · Answer

All storage devices use some of the memory for organizing the files. It would be nice to see truth in labeling but you are going to have this happen with any device.

“Why is it only 120GB when you plug the drive in? I opened the package and plugged it into my USB 3.0 drive and it only reads 120GBs.”

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